Columbia 

VERSE 

1897-1924 


Cargill Sprietsma 








CGPXKEGHT DEPO&m 












COLUMBIA VERSE 
1897-1924 


Edition limited to 500 copies 


/ 

COLUMBIA VERSE 


AN ANTHOLOGY OF VERSE PUBLISHED 
IN UNDERGRADUATE MAGAZINES OF 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY FROM 1897-1924 


SELECTED AND EDITED BY 

CARGILL SPRIETSMA ' , 

’V 

AUTHOR OF ST. GERVAIS AND OTHER POEMS 


WITH A PREFACE BY 

JOHN ERSKINE^ 


PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



jfteto park 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1924 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1924, 

By Columbia University Press 
Printed from type. Published May, 1924 



THE PLIMPTON PRESS 
NORWOOD*MASS*U*S*A 

MAY 31 ’24 v 

©C 1 A 792655 

'V 




TO 

SARAH W. RUSSELL 

Who hath known her gentle grace, 
The quiet grandeur of her face, 
Knoweth naught is greater than 
The immortality of man. 



PREFACE 


S INCE Columbia Verse was published, in 1897 , there 
has been no complete review of undergraduate poetry 
on Morningside Heights. The twenty-five intervening 
years have witnessed many innovations in the methods and 
in the subjects of poetry, and it may be of interest to the 
general reader as well as to Columbia men to see what 
some college students have been writing during that period. 
It has been a great period for youth, or so we have been 
told} it is interesting to see whether youth has influenced 
the fashions of the period or has been influenced by them. 
The various college anthologies provide us with some evi¬ 
dence on which to base an opinion, and the present col¬ 
lection of verse has the modest ambition to take its place 
with the volumes, now numerous, which represent the 
recent poetic output at other colleges. 

The poems here selected have already appeared in the 
Literary Monthly, the Varsity , the Morningside, the 
Jester, and the Sfectator. One or two poems by older 
graduates are also included, from occasional alumni num¬ 
bers of these publications. 

It ought to be said at once that the reader who looks in 
this or in any other anthology of college verse for any 
startling deviation from the traditional, will be disap¬ 
pointed. Nothing is more remarkable about youth, espe¬ 
cially American youth, than its conservatism, its too great 
docility. Every teacher of experience will probably bear 
me out in saying that youth is rarely adventurous and 
radical unless some older spirit has taught it how to be. 
College verse, however excellent in one way or another, 

vii 


PREFACE 


viii 

remains surprisingly tame. That this is true of under¬ 
graduate verse in general can be seen by turning the pages 
of Oxford and Cambridge poetry which have come to us 
in recent years; but it is especially true of America, where 
even the mature verse is tame. We are lovers of poetry, 
but childlike lovers, and our performances in the art are 
less mature now than in the days of Poe, or Longfellow, or 
Whitman — whichever the reader happens to think was our 
master poet. We are enthusiasts about the art, but we 
are at sea in the theory of it and timid in the practice. 

During the twenty-five years in which the poems of this 
anthology were produced, our enthusiasm for poetry has 
taken hold of the young, and has given the college poet a 
degree of honor or at least of decent respect among his 
fellows which formerly he did not enjoy. In most of the 
colleges there are poetry societies, devoted — unlike the 
poetry clubs of the big world — to the composing of verse 
rather than to conversation about it. In many colleges 
there are annual public readings of the best verse of the 
year, and often a substantial volume preserves the most 
creditable of the poems. In the high schools too the writ¬ 
ing and the reading of poetry is, one might say, a serious 
pastime with the youngest generation. In our educational 
system the stage is set for some genuine poetic achievement 
— if the true poets appear. 

No doubt they will appear. But if they do not appear 
among the young, they will probably not burst forth in 
middle age. Mature ingenuity can sometimes improvise a 
temporary sensation in art, but the real artist must take up 
his career with his life, not as an afterthought. It is a fine 
thing that so many mature people among us have dis¬ 
covered the charm of poetry and the delight of composing 
itj they increase the number of intelligent connoisseurs, 
and they are a moral support for any big poet who may 
arrive. But the big poet must begin young, if he is to 


PREFACE 


ix 


compete with the Shelleys and the Byrons of other times, 
with Keats or with Marlowe. And though it is usually 
thought, perhaps with justice, that the academic world is 
not the most favorable region for the cultivation of the 
arts, yet it is probably true that our colleges and schools are 
affording at present a better environment for the poets than 
they can find elsewhere in America, and for that reason 
the new poets are likely to come from those environments. 
I do not mean to praise our schools and colleges for their 
attitude toward art 5 their attitude usually deserves any¬ 
thing but praise. And I do not overlook the high prob¬ 
ability that genius may at any time show itself again, as in 
the past, in an environment which seemed unpromising to it, 
or even forbidding. I mean only to mark the fact that at 
present the academic world provides the only society in 
America in which the poet can count on some intelligent 
sympathy, some background of acquaintance with the other 
arts, some knowledge of the arts of other lands, some 
philosophic sense of what poetry means to the life of the 
race. 

Some philosophic sense of it — if we only had a greater 
sense of it! To create art or to appreciate it is to exercise 
the emotions, to love something beautiful. American life 
has little in it to exercise the emotions; no wonder that 
it gives birth to little art. Education in America is just 
beginning to train the emotions as well as the mind. In 
the lowest school grades the children are encouraged to 
have emotions and to express them in the dance, in music, 
in writing, in painting and drawing and modeling. For 
their age the children do so well that there is no question 
of our natural aptitude for the arts. The problem now is 
to continue this training through all the school and college 
grades into maturity. Some such training the Greeks had; 
for it, we could well spare a part of that book-learning 
of which the curriculum almost exclusively consists. We 


X 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


still drop the training in the arts when the time comes to 
“ prepare for college,” and about that time also, as the 
teachers know, the student drops too often all evidence of 
the soul within him — the love of beautiful and noble things 
in which he was beginning to be articulate. 

Meanwhile, here are some poems by a few American 
college students whose pursuit of beauty was aided, I hope, 
rather than interrupted by their education. 

John Erskine 


NOTE 


These verses are taken from the following 
Columbia publications: 

The Columbia Literary Monthly , which was pub¬ 
lished from February, 1893, to December, 1903. 

The Morningside , which was published from 
January, 1896, to February, 1904, and from Octo¬ 
ber, 1920, continues to appear. 

The Columbia Monthly , from February, 1904, to 
February, 1914. This journal absorbed the Co¬ 
lumbia Literary Monthly and the Morningside. 
After February, 1914, the title varies and its numbers 
appear irregularly until it ceased in 1917. 

The Barnard Bear , which was published from 
December, 1905, until May, 1922. 

The Barnard Barnacle y which has succeeded the 
Barnard Bear. 

Varsity , whose first number appeared in December, 
1919, and which continues under that name. 

The Spectator y which began in 1877 as a semi¬ 
monthly and passed through various phases: a weekly, 
a bi-weekly, and which, since the forty-fifth volume, 
continues a daily. 

All of the poems, with one exception, were written 
by undergraduates. This exception is As To Degreesy 


XI 


NOTE 


xii 

which, written by Mr. Bangs, seemed appropriate 
to the volume, since it appeared in an undergraduate 
magazine not many years ago, and serves as an intro¬ 
duction; it expresses what we all feel — 

Don't judge a fellow by his Ph.Dees — 
Although 1 would not say by any means , 

An M.A. hints an ignorance of beans. 

For making possible the publication of this anthol¬ 
ogy thanks are due to the authors, to the periodicals 
named above, and in particular to Professor John 
Erskine; to the Provost of the University, William 
H. Carpenter; to Dean Herbert E. Hawkes; and to 
Mr. Frederick Coykendall, Trustee of the University. 

C. S. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


As to Degrees cm* . 

John Kendrick Bangs . 

i 

The Alkahest clm . 

/. E. S . 

3 

Doggerel M . 

J. E. S . 

3 

Reunion clm . 

St. Augustine’s Confessions 

Joseph M. Proskauer . 

4 

X, 6 CLM . 

■Walter Nicholas Clapp. . . . 

5 

An Autumn Song m. 

• George S. Heilman . 

7 

Quatrains CLM . 

. George S. Heilman . 

8 

The Hudson clm . 

• George S. Heilman . 

9 

Arma Virumque m . 

. The Minnesinger . 

9 

The Prodigy CLM . 

■ Melville Henry Cane . 

io 

Winter-Song for Pan m . . 

. John Erskine . 

IO 

A Song of Lost Harvest M. 

.John Erskine . 

12 

“ A Beauty of St. Giles’ ” m 

.W. A. B . 

13 

Gaston Paris cm . 

. William Aspenwall Bradley 

14 

Sonnet clm . 

.William Aspenvoall Bradley 

15 

Rondel clm . 

.William Aspemvall Bradley 

15 

“ Van Am ” m . 

To a Rose Pressed in a Vo] 

William Aspenvoall Bradley 

t- 

16 

ume of Shakspere M . . 

. Robert Jermain Cole . 

17 

Hamlet and Beatrice clm . 

. Robert Jermain Cole . 

18 

A Prayer M . 

.Robert Jermain Cole . 

23 

Spiritus Intactus clm . . . . 

.Robert Jermain Cole . 

24 

Love Lost M . 

. Harold Kellock . 

24 


* Note: M — Morningside; CLM — Columbia Literary 
Monthly; CM — Columbia Monthly; V— Varsity; S — 
Spectator; BB — Barnard Bear; BBe — Barnard Barnacle; 
J — Jester. 

xiii 
































XIV 


CONTENTS 




PAGE 

The Angel M. 


25 

Forgiven ? M. 

.... Jeannette Bliss Gillespy. . 

25 

My Room m. 

.... Jeannette Bliss Gillespy. . 

26 

Quatrain CLM. 

.... Jeannette Bliss Gillespy . . 

27 

Epitaph CLM. 

.... Jeannette Bliss Gillespy. . 

27 

OaXarra! GaXarralM. . .Jeannette Bliss Gillespy. . 

27 

A Dream of a Day M 

... .J. B. G . 

28 

Parting m. 

....//. G. A Isberg . 

29 

Sonnet: Wordsworth 


CLM. 


29 

Doubt m. 

....M. C . 

30 

Spring Song in A-Minor 


M.. . 


30 

Spirit Voices clm . . . . 

. . . .Jules Victor Haberman. . . . 

3 1 

The Spirit of the 

Day 


CLM.. . 


34 

Incivism CLM. 


35 

Claramia clm. 

. . . .Henry David Gray . 

36 

As When to One 

who 


Dreams clm. 

... .Alice Felicita Corey . 

37 

Song clm . 

. . . .Alice Felicita Corey . 

37 

Homage m . 

. . . C. E. Gruening . 

38 

TeP Rammenti? m . . 

... .P. M. B . 

39 

Zur Nacht (Korner) 

M P. M. B . 

40 

Her Dilemma M . . . . 

_ P. M. B . 

4 i 

“ Puisqu ’ Ici-Ras Toute- 


Ame ” (Hugo) clm ..Maisie Seville Shainvjald.. 

41 

Good Night M . 

. ... Anonymous . 

44 

Will-o’-the-Wisp M . . 

.... Bubby Barns . 

44 

The Kisses (Catullus) 


46 

“ L’Amour du Clocher ” 


(Transl.) clm 

. . . . Isabel Estelle Isaacs .. 

46 

Swan Songs cm. 

. . . .Louis V. Ledoux . 

47 

Summer Night M . . . . 

.... Margaret Holmes Stone. . 

49 









































CONTENTS 


Bal Masque cm. “ C ” . 

Orbis Terrarum cm. R. C . 

The Unforgotten Quest 

cm. R. Carpenter . 

On the Railway Bridges 

cm. R. Carfenter . 

Thor’s Fishing cm. R. C. . 

Maeterlinck cm. C. S. W . 

To the Unknown God 

cm. C. S. W . 

Villanelle of the Players 

cm. Joyce Ktimer . 

Palinurus cm. G. W . Cronyn . 

On the Death of Swinburne 

cm. McAlister Coleman. 

Communion cm. McA. C. . 

To a Statue of Bacchus 

cm. McA. C . 

MacDowell: An Elegy 

CM. Seumas O’Sheel ... 

The Mystery cm. E. H. Pfeiffer . 

Chant d’Amour gm. E. FI. Pfeiffer . 

To a Pessimist cm. E. H. Pfeiffer . 

The Monarch cm. E. H. Pfeiffer . 

The Aeroplane cm. Simon Barr . 

Verse cm. James H. Henle .... 

Song cm. James H. Henle .... 

The Sandman and the Stars 

bb . Eleanor Myers . 

Thanksgiving bb . Florence DuB. Rees 

A Lullaby bb . Mildred, De Bois. . 

Riverside Thoughts bb. . . .Isabel E. Rathborne 

A Sonnet bb . Rhoda Erskine . 

Amberley bb. . . Mary A. Jennings. 



PAGE 

50 

50 


5 1 

52 

53 
56 

56 

57 

58 


59 

60 

60 

61 

63 

63 

64 

64 

65 
68 
68 

69 

70 

71 

71 

72 

73 

















































XVI 


CONTENTS 


Immortality CM . . . 

. C. F . 

PAGE 

74 

Fascettes cm. 


75 

Consolation cm . . . 


75 

Lament CM . 


7 6 

To . . . CM. 


77 

Fluent bb. 


77 

Enchantment BB. . 


78 

Heroic BB. 


79 

The Death of a Child BB. .Babette Deutsch . 

79 

Surfeit BB. 


80 

The Road bb . . . 


81 

On the Death of 

a Child 


BB. 


82 

Nocturne bb . 


82 

Texas bb . 


83 

The Reprobate CM 


85 

In the Gemot CM . 


87 

Epitaph on Icarus 

bb . . . . Chrystene Straiton . 

87 

Two Sonnets cm. 


88 

Justice bb . 


89 

Pageantry CM .... 

. John Landon Cooley . 

9 i 

Acrostic CM . 


92 

Separation CM .... 

. G. S. Horan . 

92 

Marma cm . 


93 

Prepare CM . 


94 

Tears bb. 


95 

Regret M. 


95 

Fragments M. 

. Mortbner J. Adler . 

96 

On the Clumsiness of a Bee 


M. 


98 

An Old New 

England 

Graveyard M . . . 


98 

Red Chevron s. . . 


100 

Fraternity M. 


IOI 

























































CONTENTS 


xvn 


Winter Shadows m . . . 


PAGE 

102 

Beyond M . 


103 

The Coming of Autumn 

M . 


T O O 



103 

The Seer m . 


106 

Sun and Rainbow m . 

. . . .Louis Zukofsky . 

107 

Louis XIV Chamber 

M . Louis Zukofsky . 

108 

Procession of Lanterns 

M . . Stanley Hart . 

109 

How He Turned Out 

j . . C. D . 

in 

The Valley of Lost 

Steps 


M. 


112 

Logs M . 


113 

The Chain M . 


114 

Sonnet M . 

. . . .Chester A. Arthur , Jr . 

115 

Survival M . 


I 16 

Chinese Etchings M . . 

. . . .Dushan Podgorshek . 

117 

Child-Poems M . 


117 

Pro Ecclesia Dei S. . . 

. . . . Cargill Sprietsma . 

n 9 

The Char s . 

.... Cargill Sfrietsma . 

II 9 

The Library s . 


120 

Cecilia M . 


I 2 I 

Mine Be Some Figured 


Flame M. 


122 

In the Train s. 

_C. H. Ford . 

122 

Footlights v. 


123 

Water-Colors m. 

. . . Joseph Brutschy . 

123 

Days BBe. 


124 

The Sorrowful Dreaming 


of Autumn M . . • • 


125 

Epithalamion M. 

. . . .Clifton P. Fadiman . 

127 

Rejected Gifts M . . . . 

. . . . William Morris Stahl. . . . 

128 

Consultation M. 

. . . William Morris Stahl. . . . 

129 

Sonnet M. 

. . . .Lawrence Dormer Jordan. . 

I29 
















































COLUMBIA VERSE 


AS TO DEGREES 


“ Virtue may choose the high or low Degree.” — Pofe 


A Rhyme With an Immoral 

He was a man with many high Degrees, 

He’d P. and Q. and sundry other Dees 
So numerous, that when he tacked the same 
Somewhere about the tail-end of his name, 

His autograph looked like an alphabet 
By lightning struck, and not unravelled yet. 

’Twas back in ’83 I met him first, 

So filled with learning that he nearly burst — 

A mine of information, fat with lore, 

An intellectual Department Store. 

’Twas thus he started on the road to fame, 
Whereon a Man of Letters he became, 

One of the best, and yet — without a name! 

For ’twixt us twain, though learned past all doubt, 
’Twas packed so tight he could not get it out, 

And though a Man of Letters, as Fve said, 

He’d happier be to-day if he were dead, 

Because it is no easy job, you see, 

To work the Rural Free Delivery — 


2 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


For in that branch of Letters ’tis he dwells, 

In spite of P.P.C’s and Double Ells. 

* * * * * * * 

A simple tale is this and yet I think 
I spy a moral floating in my ink, 

Which I will state, if so the reader please: 

Don't judge a fellow by his Ph.Dees — 

Although I would not say by any means 
An M.A. hints an ignorance of beans. 

I know some men who spite of this degree 
Are not such fools as they’re cracked up to be. 

The thing to bear forever in your mind, 

A comfort to the chap who lags behind, 

The race not always is to the A. Bees! 

Though men have risen spite of their degrees, 

You may not surely pin your faith to them. 
Sometimes the modest Tinker’s D.A.M. 

Will better serve than all those wondrous “ Docs ” 
The fairies hide in Alma Mater’s box. 

John Kendrick Bangs ’83 


The Alkahest 

Great harbor of the world! to your domain 

Vast hordes of men from regions wild and rude 
Come flocking after freedom, — all the brood 
Of Afric desert and Siberian plain, 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


3 


Of citied Italy and haughty Spain, — 

England, France, Russia, — mountain, wood, 
Lake, city, hamlet, — so our people should 
Build mightier Rome and nobler Greece again. 

This is the land, and here the centuried quest 
Surges in wonder; and the great world sees 
The course of things, that scramble on apace, 
Made plain and holy, and the mysteries 
Of law and inequality and race 
Solved in the splendor of our alkahest. 

J. E. S. 

Doggerel 

‘ Poet,’ I cried, ‘ what may you be? 5 
‘ I am a realist,’ said he. 

Another passes: ‘ What are you? ’ 

‘ A psycho-mystic, through and through! ’ 
‘And you? 5 ‘Oh, I’m a symbolist.’ 

Another bellows, ‘ I insist 
On true romanticism, sir! ’ 

‘Oho! ’ cries X, ‘may I infer 
That naturalism you reprehend? ’ 

— So they continue without end; 

Until I turn in grim despair 
From all these follies in the air: 

‘ Tell me,’ I cry, ‘ if any know it, 

Where I can find a simple foet! y 


J. E. S. 


4 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Reunion 

Swords of the snow-clad Northland, 
Swords of the rose-clad South; 

Braving as one the foeman, 

Daring the cannon’s mouth, 

Ye tell the end of the story 
Written in letters of blood, 

When against sons of the Northland, 

Sons of the Southland stood. 

Ye tell how in lire of battle 
Perished the Stars and Bars; 

But the flames they fed shed glory 
Anew on the Stripes and Stars. 

And the fame of the Gray that perished, 
And the fame of the Blue that won, 

Are yours, ye swords of the Northland 
And swords of the Southern sun. 

They, where the battle surges, 

Together flash on the foe, 

Guarding the starry banner 
Wherever it chance to go. 

And men of the North who die there, 

For you shall the Southland weep; 

And roses and rich magnolia 
Shall bury your ashes deep. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 

And men of the South whose life-blood 
Is staining the Cuban earth; 

The Northland shall mourn and bless you 
As children of her own birth. 

And thou great united nation, 

Whose sons thus die for thee, 

Born of the Gray that perished 
And the Blue of victory, 

Thou shalt cherish alike in glory, 

Thou shalt honor alike the name 

Of the Sons of the South and the Northland, 
That die for thy flag and fame. 

Joseph M. Proskauer 


St. Augustinus Confessions: X, 6 

I dreamed I stood alone upon this earth, 

And felt within that universal need 
That all souls unto their own souls confess: 

A God to worship and adore: nor knew 
His dwelling, nor His face, but merely felt 
That He must be, and I must do His will. 

* * * * * * * 

I bent and asked the earth if it were God; 

And heard the silent answer, “ No, not He.” 

And every creature that the earth gave birth 
The same words spake. I went my lonely way, 


6 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


I asked the sea; I cried unto the deep, 

And all the gliding things that therein dwell. 

“No, not thy God,” the answer still I heard; 

“ No, not thy God. Go! higher seek than we.” 

I asked the aether and the rushing wind, 

And all the things that soar upon the breeze; 

And still the answer beat upon my soul, 

“ You try in vain to find in us your King.” 

I asked the firmament on high, the sun, 

The moon, the stars, and all that rule the night. 
From all the spheres, swift-rolling in their course, 
In music soft, the answer still roll’d on: 

“ Him whom you seek in us you cannot find.” 

To all things in the universe I cried, 

“Ye all have told me that ye are not God. 

Tell me at least one little thing of Him 

For whom I seek throughout the world in vain.” 

And straight, before I ceased, the answer came, 

In mighty rushing accents smote my soul: 

“ He made us! — He is good! ” 


Walter Nicholas Clapp 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


7 


An Autumn Song 

(From the French of Paul Verlaine) 

The wailing dins 
Of violins 

In Autumn’s reign 
Strike my heart 
And make it smart 
With weary pain. 

Struggling for breath 
And pale as death 

When sounds the hour 
I burst in tears 
For long-gone years 
And long-gone power. 

And my path goes 
Where the ill-wind blows 
That bears me away 
Hither, thither, 

Like leaves that wither 
On an Autumn day. 


George S. Hellman 


8 COLUMBIA VERSE 

Quatrains 

I. Boons of Fate 

For two boons men should deem the worst of fate 
kind, 

However heavy else life’s burdens weigh: 

One, that they keep the secrets of their mind, 

And one, that they know not their dying day. 

II. During War 

Christ and the Buddha met. The elder said: 

“Art thou content with how the world is sped? ” 
The younger answered: “ I who died for men, 
Could almost wish I utterly were dead.” 

III. Folly 

The potter risked his life, they say, 

Within the oven where he baked his clay. 

Yet were his vases beautiful; whilst we 
Daily risk soul for lesser pottery. 

IV. Efitafh 

When I have passed beyond life’s mystic bars 
Let none repine; 

For love, and joy in work, and all the stars 
Were, for a little, mine. 


George S. Hellman 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


9 


The Hudson 

Where in its old historic splendor stands 

The home of England’s far-famed Parliament, 
And waters of the Thames in calm content 
At England’s fame flow slowly o’er their lands; 
And where the Rhine past vine-entwined lands 
Courses in castled beauty, there I went; 

And far to southern rivers flower besprent, 

And to the icy streams of northern strands. 

Then mine own native shores I trod once more, 
And, gazing on thy waters’ majesty, 

The memory, O Hudson, came to me 
Of one who went to seek the wide world o’er 
For love but found it not. Then home turned he 
And saw his mother waiting at the door. 

George S. Hellman 

Arma Virumque 

I like the gentle oc-to-pus, 

Because he’s such a funny cuss; 

His eyes jut out like bar-na-cles, 

Or little half-grown mussel shells; 

And though he boasts no other charms, 

The creature has a hundred arms — 

So here with Maisie, ’neath the tree 
I fain the oc-to-pus would be! 

The Minnesinger 


10 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


The Prodigy 

His teeming brain was like a granary vast 
That stored the harvests of a ripened past; 
Minerva’s child and memory’s willing ward, 
Each day’s endeavor swelled his wondrous hoard. 
The sunken currents of the earth he knew, 

The mystery of the illimitable blue, 

The fate of Greece, the counterplot of kings, 
And all the golden unremembered things. 

Yet one detail escaped him to the end: 

This genius utterly forgot his friend. 

Melville Henry Cane 


Winter-Song for Pan 

See how a king can slumber on his throne — 
Pan sleeps within the forest! There I heard 
Him piping once, there once I heard him shame 
The wild bird with his note, but now he sleeps, 
Wrapped in the ragged drifting of the snow, 
Half-naked to the wind, and by his side 
The magic pipes, long fallen from weary hand. 

God of the drowsy noon, awake! awake! 

Pipe me a summer tone once more, and pipe 
Thy godhead back again! Hast thou forgot 
The finger tips a-tingle on the pipes, 


COLUMBIA VERSE n 

The musing tone a-tremble on the lips, 

The sweets divinely breathed, the summer sweets? 
Hast thou forgot the noon-day peace, the touch 
Of forest greenness resting on the world, 

The hollow-water tinkle of the brooks, 

The startled drone of some low-circling bee? 
Once thou didst love the heat, the hushed bird-song, 
The rich half-silence, fallen on the ear, 

Like brooding ocean whispers on the sands. 

It is full-silence now; all, bird and bee 
Are silent; crystal-frozen brooks are hushed 
And wind mute silver through the land, like veins 
In quarried stone; the forest voice is gone — 
Hearken the withered crackle of the leaf 
Whose sigh of old was beautiful! The pipes 
Of Pan are stopped with icicles, when once 
Breath of a god made music. Foolish god! 

Thy finger-tips can tingle now with cold, 

And only frost be trembling on thy lips. 

Thou art but half a god, and see, the cold 
Hath gnawed away thy half-divinity, 

And made thee seem half-beast. The mocking 
chill 

Of winter parodies all human grief 
In thee; those bitter ice-drops on thy cheek — 

Was ever human tear so hard and cruel? 

Age cannot touch the gods, but see, the snow 
Hath crowned thee whiter than a thousand years! 
All this is for thy sleep! Awake, O Pan! 


12 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Breathe on thy pipes again, O pipe me back 
One summer day, and be the god of old! 

Wake bird and leaf to sighing and to song, 

Loose me the brook, and rouse the droning bee, 
Pipe down the noon-day peace, the healing touch 
Of forest greenness resting in the world; 

And come thou to thy kingdom back, and pipe, 

With mellow pipings answer me, who now 
Must wake and tune for thee my weaker song; 

But at thy waking thou shalt answer me, 

And bird and leaf and brook and drowsy noon 
Shall meet the wild bee’s droning in thy song, 
Shall close me in with sweets, until 
At lazy length, as on a summer’s day, 

I lose myself in thee, and dream, dream, dream. 

John Erskine 

A Song of Lost Harvest 

I mark the splendid shrouding-dress 
The loom of aged summer weaves, 

The golden-tinted loveliness 
Of many sunsets in her leaves. 

I mark the flight of winged throngs 
To summer-land beyond the sea, 

The dwelling-place of living songs, 

From land of dying melody. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


*3 


I mourn the barrenness of earth 

Late rich in robes of gold and brown; 
The harvest of an unknown worth 
Before the reaper cut it down. 

No flowers are perfect while they grow 
No sun is golden till it sets, 

But precious is the harvest now 

To that keen sight that loss begets. 

The sceptre to a king deposed — 

The sunlight to a blind man’s eyes; 
Before the gates of Eden closed 
There never was a Paradise. 

John Erskine 

“ A Beauty of St. Giles’ ” 

So fair and yet so wild of face, 

So full of fresh tempestuous grace, 

Small wonder that the artist sought 
To catch thy beauty rare, and thought 
Thee quite as worthy of his art 
As belles who played a prouder part. 

I’d stake thy charms against the dames 
Who ran to Drury and St. James’. 

Thine unspoiled look of eagerness, 

Thy parted lips, thy quaint head-dress 


14 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Are worth a thousand haughty smiles, 
Thou lowly beauty of St. Giles’. 

Full happy on thy choice, methinks, 

Wert thou, O J. H. Benwell y finx. 

W. A. B. 


Gaston Paris 

(Died 1903) 

In that dread hour when Paris was distraught, 
Assailed by foreign foes on every side, 

The City Fathers then flung open wide 

The academic halls: they who taught 

In time of peace the youth of France, now wrought 

To soothe the fearful populace and chide 

Their panic terror and to turn aside 

From bleeding Fatherland their smarting thought. 

And one who rose up in that solemn hour 
Was he who long had loved the old romance, 

The Song of Roland, which had first revealed 
The something more than love of land and power 
That makes a nation, and he made it yield 
New heart, new hope in two fair words, “ Sweet 
France.” 


William Aspenwall Bradley 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


15 


Sonnet 

To-night the moon gleams through a broken sky 
Of flying scud, that now obscures its face, 

And now lets die a shimmering silver space 
Upon the ocean. We are seated high 
Above the deck, we four alone, and try 
Old songs sung oft in a dear far-off place, 
Taking rough parts with tenor, air and bass, 
You, Arthur, Ralph, and Julian, and I. 

And now we tire of singing, and the flame 
Of speech burns fitful and dies feebly out; 

We sit in silence looking o’er the sea 
And that white-wake which shows the way we came, 
And each communes with his own hope or doubt 
Of all the things that may or may not be. 

William Aspenwall Bradley 

Rondel 

What if we’re growing old? 

We have been young together. 

O’er fields of fragrant heather, 

By sunny ways we’ve strolled. 

Our hearts have ne’er grown cold 

Through all life’s dreariest weather. 

What if we’re growing old? 

We have been young together. 


16 COLUMBIA VERSE 

So why should we care whether 
Some years have past us rolled? 

I’ll wear, by love consoled, 

Age gaily as a feather. 

What if we’re growing old? 

We have been young together. 

William Aspenwall Bradley 


“ Van Am ” 

D’ye ken Van Am with his snowy hair, 

D’ye ken Van Am with his whiskers rare, 

D’ye ken Van Am with his martial air, 

As he crosses the Quad in the morning? 

Chorus 

For the sight of Van Am raised my hat from my 

heady 

And the sound of his voice often filled me with 
dread . 

Ohy I shook in my boots at the things that he said 
When he asked me to call in the morning . 

Yes, I kenned Van Am to my sorrow, too, 

When I was a freshman of verdant hue. 

First a cut, then a bar, then an interview 
With the Dean in his den in the morning. 


Chorus. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


*7 


But we love Van Am from our heart and soul; 
Let’s drink to his health, let’s finish the bowl. 
We’ll swear by Van Am, through fair and foul, 
And wish him the top o’ the morning. 

Chorus. 


D’ye ken Van Am with his fine old way, 

Dean of Columbia many a day? 

Long may he live and long may he stay 
Where his voice may be heard in the morning. 

Chorus. 

William Aspenwall Bradley 


To a Rose Pressed in a Volume of Shakspere 

Rose, thou shalt sleep in a tomb, 

The loom 

Of sweet poesie weave thee a shroud. 

Above thee shall Romeo weep; 

Beside thee his love wrapped in cloud 
Of deathlike and terrible sleep. 

Rose, as thou dreamest, oh, steep 
Shakspere in perfume, heart-deep. 

Robert Jermain Cole 


i8 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Hamlet and Beatrice 

Scene: A Hall in the Palace. 

Hamlet. I do recall with greatest difficulty 
The last good man I knew, and he was old. 
No doubt the green o’ his youth grew rank with 
sin, 

But in the crackling dryness of his age, 

He thought to water back to bloom and fragrance 
The withered trunk, with penitential dew. 

He’s ashes long time since. The good, i’ faith, 
Do nothing in this world but die and leave it. 

Ha! Madame Beatrice, come and stand by me, 
And watch and rail upon this drear procession 
Of all the good a-leaving of our world, 

And all the bad a-crowding madly in. 

Beatrice. And wert thou trampled in that crowd, 
Lord Hamlet? 

And is that good excuse to curse your neighbors? 
Hamlet. A curse, fair lady, is its own excuse. 
See’st thou this grimed old sin-bespattered world? 
Why, he who claps his scorn-dipped brush upon it 
And paints it all good even black, deserves 
No chiding, but a sixpence. 

Beatrice. Come, Sir Painter, 

Albeit thy hand’s unsteady, thou art still 
A royal ’prentice and shouldst have, methinks, 
Thy tenpence or, perchance, a penny more. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


19 


Hamlet. It pleases you, my lady, to be witty. 
Beatrice. It pleases you, my lord, to give occasion 
For a whole jest-book every time you speak. 
And when you’re still I yet could hang a quip 
Upon your nose, another on each brow. 

Come, quit your drumming on the table there. 
Old Time will ne’er keep step to such a measure, 
But lag the lazier. If you’d have him haste, 
Go forth into the sun that lights his path; 

Go forth into the breeze that blows him on. 
Hamlet. I’ll do so, lady, if you come with me. 
Beatrice. In lack of merrier sadness, here’s my 
hand. 

Scene: A Forest. 

Beatrice. What! hast thou not unloaded from 
thy brow 

Thy treasure of luxurious melancholy? 

The miser hides beneath the sod his gold. 

Here, in this forest, gulf thy hoarded frowns, 
And leave them with the shadows whence they 
came. 

Hamlet. O shadow, shadow, shadow whence they 
came! 

Who shall unbridle us the mystery 
Of this our being? From the dust we came — 
Beatrice. Most like! and therein lies the explana¬ 
tion 

Of such dry discourses. Now spare mine ears. 


20 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Hamlet. (not heeding). O admirable dust! O 
wondrous dust! 

Thou breedest clowns to shovel thee away. 

A flash of gilding turneth thee to kings. 

Thou art the gentle child with heart unsoiled, 
The ancient muddy knave impenitent, 

The fragrant loveliness of maidenhood, 

Whom sorrow, passing, loves and spares a while, 
Or chastens into rarer beauteousness. 

And thou art stuff and substance of them all, 
And some day thou shalt cover them again, 

And all but thee shall fade and pass away. 
Beatrice. And all these words of thine shall pass 
away! 

I’ faith ’twere worth the losing of the rest. 

(stamps her foot) 

But stop! I will not — will not match thy mood. 
Lord Hamlet, when thou rail’st thus heavily, 

It doth so bear and press my spirit down, 

That I must use the lever of a jest 
To pry it up. But nay, I cannot longer, 

As children tie the ponderous gate with strings, 
Bind up the flood-gates of my soul with quibbles! 
Where is that noble prince that Denmark knew? 
The leg of reason where thou stand’st is lame. 
The backbone of thy will is turned to flesh, 
Thy tongue is out of joint and cannot speak 
The gracious language Heaven early taught thee. 
I tell thee, Hamlet, thou’rt a broken man. 

God mend thee. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


21 


Hamlet. Hast thou splints and bandages 
To set me straight and form me to thy mind? 

Beatrice. Not so, it is thy heart that lacketh health. 
Thy blood is poisoned with some bitter tinct, 

And cannot bear the wonted nourishment 
Unto the needy members. 

Hamlet. O most learned, 

Thou sweet physician of the heart, I prythee 
Prescribe for me some potent distillation 
That shall dispel this humor. Only look 
That in the healing thou implantest not 
Some more profound, incurable disease. 
Beatrice. Now I ordain that thou shalt seat thyself 
Here on the yielding grass, and with thine eyes 
Mark how the leafy fingers of the trees 
Shake off all daintily the dust of summer; 

And let thine ears receive the forest music; 

And breathe into thy starved, unhappy soul, 

Of Heaven’s breath, profoundest inhalations, 

Till the sweet health of Nature purify thee. 

Then when yon feathered master teaches thee 
The fine translation of thy inner thought 
Intangible, to melody immortal, 

Make thou a song unto thy lady’s ear. 

I know how thou despisest shepherd lays, 

And therefore I command thee to compose one. 
’Twill melt, perchance, thy harsh, unlovely mood. 

Hamlet. And must I do all this? 

Beatrice. You must, indeed. 


22 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Hamlet. How queen-like doth she say it! 

Well, if so, 

Then you shall be the lady of my song. 

Beatrice. O no, my lord, that was not my intent. 

Hamlet. But it is mine, and there’s an end to it. 

(Writes.) 

Beatrice. I prythee, put no silliness within’t, 

Like amorous, whining shepherds and such like. 

Hamlet. Why, that was what you ordered me but 
now. 

Beatrice. Yea, but ... I prythee look not so 
at me. 

(Hamlet writes , unheeding.) 
How many verses now? When will’t be done? 

Hamlet. ’Tis done, but in the rough. Mayhap a 
year 

From this I’ll dress it off and make it smooth 
And tunable to fit a minstrel’s tongue, 

And airy light enough to ride a moonbeam 
In at your casement of a summer’s night. 

Till then sleep undisturbed — and so shall I. 

Robert Jermain Cole 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


23 


A Prayer 

Remember, Lord, the frailty of my dust, 

And with what blows Thine enemies besiege 
The walled-in treasure of their endless lust, 

My heart that owns Thee liege. 

Remember how my holiest desires 

Close-hearted with my fierce temptations dwell, 
Till at a breath Thy fragrant altar fires 
Flame with the fires of hell. 

Remember — Ah, more need have I that Thou 
Shouldst cast all memory of me away, 

With every slighted task and unpaid vow 
Whose debt were joy to pay. 

Forget how on my dim unhallowed eyes 

The glory of Thy countenance hath shone, 
When I, descending, marred all passion-wise 
Thine image in mine own. 

Forget Thine offers of an easy good, 

Spurned for an ill whose price was pain and tears, 
Because I loved to go the way I would, 

O foolish, empty years! 

Forget — Ay, blow them with Thy mightiest blast 
To his far bourne. But let one memory live — 
That One hath loved me, earliest and last, 

And for His sake, forgive. 

Robert Jermain Cole 


24 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Spritus Intactus 

Earth, whereon his feet have pressed, 

Took they any soil from you? 

Storm that beat upon his breast, 

Could you force an entrance through? 

Wind that howled above his head, 

Through the branches, sad and long, 

To the torrent’s thunder wed, 

Could you keep from Heav’n his song? 

Robert Jermain Cole 


Love Lost 

Wrap thee about, O heart! 

Garment of grieving: 

Seek not to soothe the smart, 
Sweetly deceiving. 

Only her scorn for thee, 

Earth made forlorn for thee; 
Merry love’s morn for thee, 
Bitter love’s leaving! 

What flame can bring for thee, 
Light to dead ember? 

Kisses of spring for thee, 

Tears of November — 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


25 


What has time got for thee 
If she smile not for thee? 

What can fate lot for thee, 

Save to remember? 

Harold Kellock 


The Angel 

The Angel of Renunciation came 

And wrestled with me; and I would not cease, 
From dusk to dawning, till I knew his name, 
Wherefore he blessed my yearning: “ I am Peace! ” 
Jeannette Bliss Gillespy 


Forgiven P 

I saw Love stand, 

Not as he was ere we in conflict met, 

But pale and wan. I knelt — I caught his hand — 
“O Love,” I cried, “I did not understand! 

Forgive — forget! ” 

Love raised his head 

And smiled at me, with weary eyes and worn. 

“ I have forgot — what was it all? ” he said; 

“ Only — my hands are scarred where they have 
bled; 

My wings are torn.” 

Jeannette Bliss Gillespy 


26 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


My Room 

These are my walls that open on the world, 

And these my doors that lead to every age; 

This bit of tiling saw Spain’s glory furled; 

Here rounds the splendor of the Attic stage. 

Plato and Goethe greet as greet the gods; 

Browning and Shakespeare meet as man with man; 
Isaiah thunders loud, and Homer nods, 

And a high Christ fulfils a half-seen plan. 

Here Omar sings his creed of wine and song, 

And Swinburne sings his song without a creed; 
And Mary, half-rebelling, triumphs long; 

And Echo’s love climbs with itself for meed. 

And here, at home, though clad in modern guise, 
Dwell Faith, and Doubt, and Death, and Life, 
and Love, 

And Evil masks as Good, in ancient wise, 

And Soul bewildered calls on Truth above. 

Futures are raffled for and kingdoms fall; 

The long-dead ages listen, look, are still — 

Only My Lady Lisa on the wall 

Smiles as the gods, who know both good and ill. 

Jeannette Bliss Gillespy 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


2 


Quatrain 

“ O clear-eyed daughter of the gods, thy name? 

Bravely she answered: “ I am called Success.” 
“ The house, the lineage whence thy beauty came? 
u Failure my sire; my mother, Weariness.” 

Jeannette Bliss Gillespy 


Epitaph 

A life that failed in its success; 

That having service in its power, 
Chose to be ruler for an hour, 

And knew not that it chose the less. 

Jeannette Bliss Gillespy 


BaXarra. GaXarra 

Another weary mountain-slope to scale 
After so many passed; on either side 
Forest, where haply fiercest foemen hide, 

And doubt and famine every step assail. 

But hark! to those whose hope and courage fail, 
A shout that rushes like the coming tide, 

Deep, jubilant, exultant, swelling wide — 

“ The sea! the sea! ” — what more could tell 
the tale? 


28 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


For triumph sweeps away the former pain, 

And makes the weary journey seem as naught 
With promise sure of life and home again. 

Ah Soul! shall ever any mountain be 

Where, all the summits gained, all battles fought, 

We too exulting cry, “The sea! the sea! ” 

Jeannette Bliss Gillespy 


A Dream of a Day 

Love came over the hills one day 

With step as free as a woodland fawn, 

And the flowers opened along his way, 

But the blind world called it dawn. 

Love sat by a wayside spring, 

Wearied and spent, too soon, too soon, 

And the birds in the trees had forgot to sing — 
But the blind world called it noon. 

Love went over the hills again, 

Clutching the last torn shreds of light, 

And the blossoms fell in a sudden rain — 

But the blind world called it night. 


J. B. G. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


29 


Parting 

Sweet friend, I scarce can cry “ Farewell,” 

Upon thy way to leave me; 

My stubborn tongue is loath to tell 
What words do most bereave me. 

Sweet friend, I pray this be thy mete 
(Where friendship grudges more); 

Those paths be easy to thy feet 
That soonest kiss my door. 

H. G. Alsberg 

Sonnet: Wordsworth 

Long, Wordsworth, have I missed thy beauty, long 
Have looked on all thy verse as barren prose 
Where Morals and Philosophy arose 
To prate of truth and wisdom, right and wrong. 
Melodious music, lyric burst of song — 

The gladsome offspring of the poet’s throes — 

I found them not, but went as one who goes 
Blinded by light unseen because too strong. 

The light which erstwhile dazzled now grows clear: 
Philosopher and poet are akin; 

Both look without on nature and within 
On man; nor is the gaze in aught austere. 

He whosoe’er will seek at last shall find 

The throbbing heart beneath the sentient mind. 

Charles Lockwood 


30 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Doubt 

Gravely perplexed, I fain would know 
Who was it lectured on Rousseau. 

A Barnard girl, in accents odd, 

Spoke of a certain Monsieur Rod. 

And then a Mr. So-and-so 

Said that the man was Edouard Rod. 

A third, who seemed of Gaelic blood, 

Told me I’d heard the famous Rod. 

And by another language-code 
A fourth assured me it was Rod. 

Now, were those lectures on Rousseau 
By Rud, or Road, or Rod, or Ro? 

M. C. 


Spring Song in A-Minor 

I hear a little feathered minstrel sing 
Beneath the eaves, 

With youth-impassioned notes thus carolling: 

“ Oh welcome, welcome, oh! thou glorious spring! 
And then he leaves. 

I see him soar into the cloudless skies 
On golden wing; 

With bubbling joy he seems to fall and rise, 

And wanton through the air with gladsome cries, 
Saluting spring. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


3i 


I wonder how he learned that spring was nigh. 
’Tis passing strange. 

I fail to see it in Dawn’s crimsoned sky, 

Or Evening’s purple when soft shadows lie; 

I see no change. 

How shall I know that winter’s passed away, 

O Philomel! 

That vernal beauty once more smiles of Day? 

And from afar, prophetic voices say: 

“ Thy heart must tell.” 

Oft do I look into that deep domain — 

Home of Regret! —- 

Where all my buried hopes for years have lain; 
Naught there but frost, and ice, and ling’ring pain; 
’Tis winter yet! 

Jules Victor Haberman 

Spirit Voices 

Is it this frame, this thought-impassioned clay 
That in its gradual evolution builds 
The intricate phenomenon of life? 

And living, but the clash of hollow things 
Which accident begets and time decays? 

Listen, and underneath the grosser sounds 
Harmonious strains are heard to ebb and flow, 

To rise, to waver, tremblingly to blend 
Like choir-voices in some choral round. 


32 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Ah, it is this, this music far within 
These quivering voices permeating time, 

Which truly live, and knit the lives of men. 

Does one not hear these voices sadly sweet 
That echo in the heart, and, flowing on, 

Are joined with voices from some other sphere? 

Does one not feel deep in his inmost soul 
A power stronger than the sceptered mind, 

Some music that in bursting forth o’erwhelms 
And drowns the sense in floods of sweetest rhyme? 

As when the twilight’s amethystine shade 
Casts shadows dim upon the tired brain, 

And we perchance amid delirious dreams 
Sip from the poppy’s chalice tranced sweets, 

We seek to rouse ourselves and break the spell, — 

Still dream we idly on until we fall 

Through drowsy ethers skirting Lethe’s shores, 

And where bright iridescent splendors gleam, 

Meet and conjoin with other spirit voices. 

Often at eventide we stop to list 
The muffled monody some trusted bell 
Is tolling slow; and hushed in silence heed 
To inner strains unheard at other times, 

Which seem like softened notes some tender hand 
Has touched upon the heart-strings long ago. 
Sometimes in church we listen half entranced 
To deep and sacred-solemn organ tones 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


33 


That in a wealth of melody exalt 
Us high in billowed ecstasy, then drop 
Us into depths of self. ’Tis then we hear 
Another organ playing soft and sad, 

Life’s miserere to our crying souls. 

Look far into the deep of lingering eyes, 

Drink at those wells of Love’s enraptured wine — 
And at that draught this world of flesh dissolves 
And Self is metamorphosed into Soul, 

And like a little flower dying young 
Sends all its perfumed offerings up on high. 

Spirit of Love, voice in a key divine! 

Thou Alchemy transmuting dross to gold! 

Thou art the angel-visitant that glides 
Into our midst to tarry but a while, 

With thy ambrosial lips to kiss our lives 
And dimple our existence with surprise. 

And thus in notes resounding full and clear, 

Heard by a subtle sense within alone, 

The modulated voices of the soul 
Are caught within the sounding board of Life 
And here by chance arrangement form and flow 
In full majestic major rhapsodies 
Of soft melodious minor trebles low; 

And swelling forth in sadness or in joy, 

Blend heart with heart in love-entwined chords 
And pulsing on in melody, create 
The universal Symphony of Souls. 

Jutes Victor Haberman 


34 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


The Sprit of the Day 

At Heaven’s door a hymn the seraphs pealed 
As on the world below the day was dying, 

When to their sight celestial was revealed 
An angel flying. 

Infinity descending through the night, 

Past planets in eternal chorus singing, 

She bridged the space to earth with arch of light, 

A burden bringing. 

To men she flung the burden, and she spake: 

“ A gift from God this is, called life in Heaven, 

He bids that you this shapeless gift shall take 
As it is given. 

“ He bids you mould it as your souls may lead; 

He bids you know it as your eyes may see it; 

From other care than this you shall be freed; 

He doth decree it! ” 

The soldier heard and hewed it with his sword, 

It bled and groaned, the world with sorrow 
freighting. 

To such as he, life crumbled to a word, 

And love, mere hating. 

The priest and parish at the Sabbath shrine, 

Who thought life not the love of each and any, 

Gave ear, conceiving most of all divine 
The love of many. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


35 


The poet heard and understood above 

The light of others. Kindled with God’s fire, 
He struck the chord of universal love 
Upon his lyre. 

W. J. Heimann 

Incivism 

Am I traitor? Dare ye call me so 

Because I think my country in the wrong? — 
Because I say, her leaders overthrow 

Those rights for which our fathers fought so 
long? — 

Because I mock Expansion’s siren song, 

And think of the republics of the past, 

Which, while republics, flourished and grew strong, 
But turned to empires — and to dust, at last? 

You ask my reasons? —Civilization moves 

With Mars and drunken Bacchus on each hand, 
She makes Samar a howling wilderness, 

Seizes its soil, which piously she proves 
Not for benighted heathen to possess, 

And drives wild virtue from the outraged land. 


Richard Kelly 


36 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Claramia 

Sweet Claramia, down by the sea, 

Down by the restless, rolling ocean, 

When I am gone, will you think of me? 

Will you know that my heart in its turbulent motion 
Throbs in response to the ocean and thee? 


Sweet Claramia, down by the sea, 

When in the night you shall hear the lone breaking 
Of wave upon wave in their dull harmony, 

And are sad for the moaning the black waves are 
making, 

Will one of them, breaking, remind you of me? 


Sweet Claramia, down by the sea, 

When to the fulness of life you are waking, 

If you learn that though love never ceases to be, 
There are moments in life when the whole heart is 
breaking — 

Then, O then, will you think of me? 


Nay, Claramia, it shall not be! 

I will not have thee mar thy tomorrow 
With any remembering thought of me; 
Take thou the joy and give me the sorrow, 
And all shall be as it ought to be. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


37 


Sweet Claramia, down by the sea, 

Though my poor heart deserved only your scorning, 
If ever you pause for a last thought of me, 

Know that you gave me a glimpse of the morning, 
And my thoughts will be sweet when I’m thinking 
of thee. 


Henry David Gray 


As When to One Who Dreams 

As when to one who dreams the day slips by, 
Unheeded and unfruitful, till the end, 

Departs in flaming sunset and then pales 
And leaves the stars to keep the sky awake — 

So was I while I knew thee, dream of dreams. 
For while thy face made radiant all my world, 
And while the light of love was waning fast, 
Still slept I on, nor knew the night was come, 
Till startled by a stillness I awoke, 

To find thee gone — O doubly gone! 

While far away, forever burning bright, 

The stars of vain remembrance glistened on. 

Alice Felicita Corey 

Song 

Red roses are the days, sweetheart, 

That still are left with thee. 

Red roses kissed by evening dew, 

And bending on their tree. 


38 COLUMBIA VERSE 

The roses tremble on their tree, 

Beneath the touch of night. 

Red roses, fresh in evening dew, 

But—fading from our sight. 

Alice Felicita Corey 


Homage 

The wandering breezes that float and flow, 

The honeyed roses that bloom and blow, 

The wavering starbeams that glance and glow, 
All these 

Are linked with the names of a thousand maids; 
The breezes have whispered them into the glades, 
And the roses and stars have been likened to shades 
Next to these. 

The poets have sung it; and into the air 
They have wafted the fragrance of names that are 
fair. 

And all nature has helped to call rare things more 
rare; 

But, my own, 

Thou needest not, to praise thee, these petty conceits. 
Shall thy sweetness be coupled with thousands of 
sweets, 

Which forever my heart to heart’s self repeats 
All alone? 


C. E. Gruening 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


39 


Tel y Rammenti? 

Dost thou remember, love, that night 
Upon the still lagoon? 

Ah, hark! It seems I hear afar 
The rhythmic pulse of thy guitar, 

Thy voice that soared beyond the star 
Poised there beside the moon. 

Dost thou remember, love, the song? 

“ Non ti scordar di me ” — 

Forget? While loving hearts shall beat 
There can be no forgetting, sweet. 

I do but hear thy lips repeat 
The words I kissed away. 

Dost thou remember, love, the vow 
That bade our hearts unite? 

Ah well, the lights are flick’ring still 
Across the tide; the songs yet thrill 
The list’ning ear as once. Until 
Eternity, good night! 

P. M. B : 


40 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Zur Nacht 

(From the German of Theodore Korner) 

Love, good night, 

Cares of waking take their flight. 
Softly day from earth is stealing, 
Bringing weary hands their healing, 
Till the morrow’s breaking light. 
Love, good night. 

Go to rest, 

Close thine eyes with care oppressed. 
Stillness creeps o’er town and tower 
As the watchman calls the hour, 
Night winds whisper from the west: 
Go to rest. 

Love, good night. 

Slumber till the dawning light, 
Slumber till the cruel morrow 
Brings its still more cruel sorrow, 
Fearless in the Father’s sight. 

Love, good night. 


P. M. B. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


4i 


Her Dilemma 

I don’t believe in telling fibs 
About one’s age, do you? 

And yet sometimes ’tis pretty hard 
To know just what to do. 

For instance, in another week 
My birthday will be here, 

And cousin Jack has vowed to take 
A kiss for every year. 

Now, if I tell him I’m real old, 

It might perhaps leak out 

And be believed by all my friends 

As Gospel truth no doubt. 

But on the other hand, if I 
Take off a year or two, 

You see yourself that Jack won’t- 
What am I going to do? 


“ Puisqu y Ici-Bas Toute-Ame 

(Translation from Victor Hugo) 

Since life is ordered so 
That every soul 
Must to another show 
Its perfect whole — 


- well 
P. M. B. 

» 


42 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Its fragrance and its fire, 

Its secret sighs, 

And all the hidden choir 
Of harmonies; 

Since all things give to those 
They love, their flowers, — 

The thistle or the rose, 

Of mingled hours; 

Since April gives the oak 
Its Spring refrain; 

Since Night, with star-filled cloak 
Gives peace to pain; 

Since, when the river slips 
Into the sea, 

The salt tides kiss its lips 
In ecstasy — 

To thee, now, whom I love, 

I make bequest 

Of what in me may prove 
To be the best. 

Take thou my inmost thought, 

That thro’ the years 

Comes like a still dew, fraught 
With many tears! 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


43 


Take the vows Eve made, 

Dear Love, I pray! 

Take thou the light and shade 
Of all my day! 

My joys and aspirations, 

Soaring care-free, 

And all my songs’ pulsations, 

Throbbing to thee! 

My spirit that, adrift, 

Wanders afar. 

Except when thro’ a rift 
Pierces thy star! 

My dream-hours’ inspiration 
Forever keep: 

Its tears thy consolation 
When thou must weep! 

Take to thy keeping blest 
My heart again, 

Where, if Love may not rest, 

Naught can remain! 

Maisie Seville Shainwald 


44 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Good Night 

Good night. 

The moonbeams slumber on the sea, 

The night-wind stirs thy tresses in the light 
That falls from dreaming stars. And must it be 
Good night. 

Good night. 

Thine eyes are calling me to stay, 

Thy beauty draws with bitter-sweet delight. 

I must not choose. I may but pause to say 
Good night. 

Good night. 

I would not leave thee sad with tears, 

Yet, oh, how sweet remembrance if I might 
Hear one faint sigh go trembling down the years, 
Good night. 

Anon. 


Will-o y -the-Wisp 

Aboon the linn an’ doon the glen, 
A-keekin’ oot frae cove an’ fen, 
At gloamin’ time the little men 
Wi’ lamps a-licht, 

Are aft asteer to fley the frien’ 
Wha daurs the nicht. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


45 


The Spunkie loups wi’ lowin’ lamp 
Ayont the dub, wee jinkin’ scamp, 

An’ bides abeigh whaur rashes damp 
Sough i’ the win’ 

A-linkin’ roun’ his lawlan camp 
Wi’ a’ his kin. 

Fra fa’ o’ nicht till dawnin’ ray 
The sprites i’ mirk or moonlicht play 
Amang the grushie rashes gray. 

But Spunkies a’ 

Whan ower moorlan’ creeps the day, 
Maun hie awa’. 


Bubby Barns 


Glossary 


aboon, above 
linn, waterfall 
keekin’, feefing 
asteer, abroad , astir 
fley, to frighten 
daur, to dare 
spunkie, will-o’-the-wisf 
loups, leafs 


lowin’, flaming , glowing 
dub, fond 

jinkin’, jumfing , dancing 
abeigh, at a shy distance 
a-linkin’, triffing 
mirk, darkness 
grushie, thick-gr owing, lush 


4 6 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


The Kisses 

(Catullus) 

Let us live and love, O Lesbia mine, 

And count the sour censure of old men 
As worth the penny for which beggars whine. 

Suns may rise and suns may set again: 

For us, when once day’s fleeting ray has fled, 
The night is one unbroken slumber sweet. 
Upon thy lips a thousand kisses spread, 

And then a hundred, let our lips but meet 
A thousand times and then a hundred more. 

When many thousands then our lips have passed, 
Forgotten shall the counting be, lest o’er 
Our ecstasy an evil spell be cast 
By listening demons; let us, score by score 
And kiss by kiss, drift onward to the last. 

B. 

“ UAmour du Clocher ” 

(Translation) 

Happy the man, from distant lands returning, 
Ulysses-like, unto his native shore, 

With purpose to rest quiet evermore, 

Rich in experience and hard-won learning. 

Ah! when shall I appease my heart’s sad yearning, 
When see my smoking chimney-tops once more, 
The vineyard that I tended years before, 

The hearth with cheery logs forever burning? 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


47 


The little nest my fathers built, to me 
Is fairer than the proud estates of Rome; 

The Gallic Loire flows far more clear and free 
Than Latin Tiber with its tawny foam; 

And sweeter e’en than air breathed from the sea, 

Is the soft warmth that clothes the vales of home. 

Isabel Estelle Isaacs 


Swan Songs 

i 

When the sun’s last slanting rays 
Set the rapturous clouds ablaze 
All in gold, 

Then we see with clearer vision 
Far into the fields Elysian: 

And we hold 

For some fleeting instants, briefly, 
Knowledge of the things which chiefly 
In our life 

Are beyond the reach of thought, 
Though they eagerly are sought 
Through the strife. 

II 

With the dying daylight streaming 
Glides a lustrous radiance gleaming 
From above. 


48 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


And we look into the spaces 
Of the joyous far-off places 
Whence the love 

Of God like purest sunbeams glowing, 

Or a river, ceaseless flowing, 

To the sea, 

Comes without one breath of sadness, 
Bright with messages of gladness, 

Down to me. 

ill 

So some mortals sinking, dying, 

When the light of life is flying 
Far away, 

Pass with courage, nobly, purely, 

Down the gloomy path which surely 
Leads to day. 

Then we feel how strong and holy, 

Filled with kindness to the lowly, 

Were their days. 

How they lived, through years of grieving, 
Trusting, hoping, still believing, 

Lives of praise. 

IV 

When the twilight falls at last, 

And toil and trouble all are past, 

With them flies 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


49 


Through the mournful, funeral dirges, 
Triumph, which forever surges 
Toward the skies, 

And their faces grow the brighter 
As their souls slip even lighter 
From us here: 

Passing from the world while singing 
Words with which the skies are ringing: 

“ God is near.” 

Louis V. Ledoux 


Summer Night 

What myriad sounds make silence! 

’Tis the whirr 

Of insect’s wing, the rustle of the grass, 

The soft vibration where the light winds pass 
Nor shake the flower petals, ’tis the stir 
Of growing things, the chirp of cricket’s song 
As all the breath of languorous summer night, 
Green nature all a-tremble, hums, and flight, 

Into a chorus blending. Firm and strong 
Melts one into another, till a psalm 
Of nature’s waking rises. All the air 
Throbs vibrant, naught distinguishable there 
Of sound, all peace, all quiet, and perfect calm. 


Margaret Holmes Stone 


50 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Bal Masque 

I never cared for sheep before 
I met you, Dresden shepherdess, 

But when you came upon the floor 
In that beguiling, antique dress, 

It only needed one quick look 

To change my taste in rapid style 
And fall a victim to your crook 
And follow with a lambent smile. 

“ C.” 

Or bis Terr arum 

Small is the earth: in some forgotten realm 
Lost blindly in the emptiness of space, 

Engirt with flaring suns that overwhelm 
All sense of time, all periods of place, 

Set round with darkness in a void abyss, 

Earth turns and turns, a little dancing mote 
Within a sun-beam; over, under this, 

Great wastes where through no light-beam ev 
smote. 

Great is the earth: with hands that toil in night 
Are builded cities and vast emperies, 

Colossal projects struggling for the light, 

Strong beacons in immeasurable seas; 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


5i 


And over these and in the midst of them 
The workers fashion and in might fulfill, 

With floods of strength which aeons may not stem 
Nor turn from their unconquerable will. 

R. C. 


The Unforgotten Quest 

Amid the mystic peaks of Montsalvat 

We heard the tolling of a deep-mouthed bell, 
And found that which no speech of man shall tell 
Within the temple of the Grail, whereat 
We worshipped, being present at the feast, 

The terrible, mysterious Eucharist, 

And felt the bread and wine before us kissed 
By lips of an invisible High Priest. 


We passed beyond into eternal snow 

And gained the mountains at the summit of the 
world, 

Thence gazing we beheld the golden sunlight 
hurled 

From peak to peak and ridge to ridge below. 

We saw the earth beneath us, and the seas, 

The pillars of the sunset in the West, 

The haze about the Islands of the Blest 
Enshrouded in eternal mysteries. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


52 

Strong child of dreams, beyond us are the stars, 
Lose not thy faith nor hope nor mastery, 

Forget the sounds of turmoil and strange wars, 
Look up, above thee is eternity. 

R. Carpenter 


On the Railway Bridges 

Girders of iron; the bridges wrought of steel, 
Fashioned by Titans laboring in night, 

Naked against a sullen glow of light 
From furnaces wherein the hot floods reel 
Flame-drunken; toil-engirdled men that feel 
The pulse of elemental world-ways; might 
And power; blind forces without sense of sight 
In depths and shadows which the hills conceal. 

These were as far-off visions in a dream; 

Silence, that knows no speech, was utter lord; 

“ Earth is asleep, asleep her toiling men, 
Naught wakes,” I said. There broke a sudden gleam 
And, out of darkness, thunderous there roared 
The onrush — passed — and all was night again. 


R. Carpenter 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


53 


Thor’s Fishing 

Heavy sky and heavy sea, 

Running clouds and wind-blown crests, 
Raging foam and sea-green froth; 

Who is abroad? Who may it be? 

Is it a god? what god is he? 

Baldur in bright Asgard rests: 

Home is Odin the Goth. 

Dark is ocean, heavy foam 
Swirls about the oars, 

Wet is the rower’s seat; 

Who are these that dare to come 
On the seas abroad from home 
With the wind across the shores 
And a storm beneath their feet? 

Breaks the foam across the bow: 

Who may well these fishers be 
Laboring with heavy oar, 

Who and whither going now? 

Hymir rowing at the prow 
Out across the furthest sea, — 

Hymir and his guest-friend Thor. 

Sweeps the wind across the storm: 

Now they check their toil and pause 
Over deepest, darkest sea; 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Under wave, strange monsters swarm, 
Creatures with misshapen form, 

Horrible with teeth and claws, 

Never seen of thee or me. 

Laughed the giant-killing Thor, 

“ Here we’ll drop our lines and bide 
What our fisher’s luck shall bring.” 
Shuddered Hymir, yet forebore, 

Though he wished him well ashore. 
Tossed the shallop in the tide, 

Came the storm with raven wing. 

“ Ha! ” cried Thor, u the hook goes home! 
Bent and braced against the seat, 

Pulled with all his strength of arm; 

Out of sea the slow line clomb. — 
Sudden broke the sea to foam, 

And a struggle fierce and fleet 
Filled all heaven with alarm. 

Out of ocean, slimy, hoar, 

Came the fearful Midgard Snake, 
Lashing with sea-yellow teeth. 

Strained against the line the more 
In his Aesir-might great Thor, 

Strained until the shallop brake 
And all ocean yawned beneath. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


55 


Brake the thunder overhead; 

Flared the lightning on the sea; 

Shook the earth through all her length; 
Howled the storm and raging sped; 
Ruinous their revelry: 

Asgard trembled in his strength. 

Then had perished earth and sky 
In this struggle with the Snake 
Writhing with colossal Thor 
Where, sea-wetted to the thigh, 

Stood the god; but with a cry 
Lest the firmament should break 
And the world should be no more, 

Hymir leapt with knife set wide, 
Striking once and once again 
At the line until it brake. 

Terribly great Thor outcried, 

Saw the world-old monster glide 
Under wave in writhing pain, — 

So was lost the Midgard Snake. 


R. C. 


56 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Maeterlinck 

Darkness; the dumb, mysterious moon, the kind 
And patient star throngs, sick with fear, that wait 
Above whispered warning of the wind; 

Subconscious forces of the soul, that bind 
Impotent phantom things to love and hate, 

The splendid triumph of Life’s master, Fate! 

C. S. W. 


To the Unknown God 

Great unknown Diffuser of all being, 

Unseen, unheard, yet seen and heard in all, 

Unfelt, yet moving in the soul’s emotions, 

Falsely called God, for thou art neither good 
Nor evil, neither true nor false, nor wise 
Nor foolish, nay, nor beautiful nor ugly, 

Behold I take thy gift, this pulsing life 

That now I call my very own, for just 

This span of earthly years, to trifle with 

And waste, or mould to beauty’s best, perchance. 

I thank thee, Blind One, for my birth and breath. 
And since I know that never was before 
This very I, nor e’er again shall be 
In just this form unique, I take myself 
For better or for worse, as shall appear. 

I seek no help nor ever ask forgiveness: 

For every failure I would pay the price 
Appointed as the proper, for success 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


57 


Demands the just reward that is my due. 

So shall I be the master of my fate 

And not the slave of circumstance nor thee. 

And though I fail, as men count failure here, 

I shall at least have lived and used thy gift, 
Which was my purpose: not to save my life 
But just to live with all the strength of soul 
That I possess, nor ask the why and whither; 
To make the day sufficient and a blessing 
Though no tomorrow dawn, and when the sun 
Of my existence sets to know not fear, 

Neither regret the having lived, because 
The end seems nigh, but laying in thy hands 
The gift thou gavest me within the womb, 

In thankful silence trust what thou wilt do. 

C. S. W. 


Villanelle of the Players 

Violets fade with the May, 

Purple and fragrant, they die. 
Players live for a day. 

What is their legacy, pray? 

Where does their loveliness lie? 
Violets fade with the May. 

Actors in motley array 

Grace of your memory cry. 
Players live for a day. 


58 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Where the sad pine trees sway 
Lonely the reft winds sigh. 

Violets fade with the May. 

Withered the leaves of bay, 

Winecups are cracked and dry. 

Players live for a day. 

None shall our epitaph say, 

Clouds of the sunset sky. 

Violets fade with the May. 

Players live for a day. 

Joyce Kilmer 

Palinurus 

Starlight: with deep and quiet breathing slept 
The southern sea. The white-winged ship that bore 
The good Aeneas from his Dido’s shore 
Ghostlike, with rippling furrows, onward crept; 
And only the faithful Palinurus kept 
The midnight watch — but ah, the magic bough, 
The opiate dew that dript upon his brow, 

The vacant post — the friends that waking wept! 

The gods demand their victims; who shall know 
What failures Time and Circumstance compel? 

Yet, if such doom were mine, I would ’twere so 
That they would mark the absence thus: “ How well 
Even unto the last he struggled, lo! 

He tore the rudder with him when he fell! ” 

G. W. Cronyn 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


59 


On the Death of Swinburne 

The tawny nightingale is sorely grieving, 

She weeps for Itys! Itys! Through the trees 
And from the southlands that the birds are leaving 
I hear her song of sorrow on the breeze. 

The sweet-throat swallow now has lost her brother, 
She searches for him through the empty skies, 
For she had loved him and, today, no other 
Answers responsive to her eager cries. 

And where Thalassius, the beloved, is sleeping, 
There wails a note of anguish through the air. 
Since all the wood-nymphs and the fauns are weeping 
For the great, lordly lover who lies there. 

Yea, and we too, the younger brothers, follow 
Bringing our garlands for the god-like head; 
And one with faun and nightingale and swallow 
Cry our “Alas! Thalassius is dead.” 

Fair lyric soul, who sang before the dawning, 

Who caught the wistful wonder of the sea, 

Who heard the star-songs and yet sought the morn¬ 
ing— 

Hail to thy greatness and farewell to thee. 


McAlister Coleman 


6o 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Communion 

Purpureal wreathed censers swinging through 
The mystic silences of God’s high house, 

The lifted symbols of the One they slew 

Make dumb the shoutings and the loud carouse 
That in my heart held sway. But in this place, 

I feel fair forms behind the arras move, 

And through the incense, the Beloved’s face 
Smiling upon me with its wondrous love. 

McA. C. 


To a Statue of Bacchus 

Writ in thy face are dreamy days of fall, 

Soft sequences of ripening grape on vine, 

Bright hints of happier summer linger still, 

But all the sadness of the year is thine. 

Thou art a symbol of the windy days 

Of flaming hills whereon the shadows lie, 

A dream of moon-mad, riot-ridden hours 

Through which the summons of the Maenads cry. 


McA. C. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


61 


MacDowell: an Elegy 

The Master lieth low, he is taken: 

Let us bow. 

But let us not despair, though the heart be shaken: 
When is the time for faith, if it be not now? 

His dreams were troubled here; there is rest where 
he will waken, 

Peace at last will be white around his brow. 

And there will be Reward: it is for that he is taken. 
Let us bow, 

Then let us lift our hearts, that a deep-sprung, joy¬ 
ous strain 

May dominate these minors of deep pain. 

How we should wrong him if our faith were weak! 
He was no doubting soul, who first 
Dared in our rougher forest-wilds to seek 
The gods who give men music; 

Who bade the winds of lake and prairie burst 
To harmonies that hushed and held the world! 
How we should shame him if we feared! 

He was no timid soul, 

Who found his music where the sea-storms whirled, 
And the white towering bergs came cruising, mist- 
enfurled! 

How we should wrong him by despair! 

Him, who found all things so fair, 


62 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Who understood Eternal Joy, 

And sang of it in songs so rare; 

Let us not wrong him by despair! 

But our hearts are wrung: 

Grief will not be still, 

Sorrow must find a tongue. 

Grief and Sorrow? ah, these 
Also the Master knew: 

Listen — those melodies — 

Do they not seem to feel? 

Cries from a soul that was wrung! 

Play then his melodies, 

And his subtle harmonies; 

And his rare sad songs let us sing as we oft have 
sung. 

Enough! The Tragic note is heard by all — 

The universal music of mankind. 

He rose above it to an Heroic call, 

Triumphing with great heart and soul and mind. 
He listened to the Immemorial Wind 
That bloweth ever from the far Dawn-Days 
Old epic fragments and old bardic lays: 

He learned their secret and their prophecy — 

Listen — Eternal Beauty — Immortality! 

The Master lieth low: he is taken: 

Let us bow. 

But let us rejoice, though our hearts be shaken! 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


63 


Peace and Reward will be white upon his brow, 

Joy will be his, where he will awaken. 

Strong is our faith, and our hearts are lifted now: 
Grief is a minor in the harmony; 

Joy is triumphant, Immortality! 

Seumas O’Sheel 


The Mystery 

I am a coward: that, I know. 

I am a nothingness, a sham; 

And yet withal I feel I am 
Fine-chiseled as a cameo. 

I am a crust of slimy mire, 

A slave to fear, to doubt, to shame; 

And yet I feel within me flame 
A soaring spark of solar fire. 

I am a clotted, earthly clod, 

A shade, a mere nonenity; 

I know the beast that lurks in me, 

And yet I feel that I am God! 

E. H. Pfeiffer 


Chant P Amour 

Call me, call me, I will rise 
Though never so far away, 

And I shall know by a glance of your eyes 
What all your soul would say. 


6 4 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Call me, call me, I will rise — 

Never shall I forget, 

And I shall know by a glance of your eyes 
Whether you love me yet. 

E. H. Pfeiffer 


To a Pessimist 

O restless soul and malcontent, 

Disconsolate with wrong, 

Smile thou at least on God’s intent. 

The farcfe will end ere long. 

Glance gently on the ill and odd 
With calm, unruffled brow . . . 

Perhaps, thou wilt enlighten God 
An hundred years from now. 

E. H. Pfeiffer 


The Monarch 

All the world is at my throne, 

Obedient to my nod alone. 

My court is tapestried with stars, 

My crown is bright with loot of wars. 
But far away from loot of wars 
With eager eyes like searching stars, 

A maiden dreams of me alone . . . 

And casts a shadow on my throne. 

E. H. Pfeiffer 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


65 


The Aeroplane 

Hark! the air is rife with whirring and the hum of 
human wings 

Rushing through the restless heav’ns in ever further- 
reaching rings. 

See! the flashing planes illume the silver cloud- 
flecked summer sky, 

Soaring hither, thither, seeming with the speeding 
birds to vie; 

Falcon-swooping, kestrel-looping, eagle-soaring, ar¬ 
row-swift; 

Now clear-lined against the azure, now endraped 
in cloud a-drift. 

Glory! it is Man that flies thus, far above his wonted 
sphere. 

Glory! it is Man whose pinions throbbing greet the 
gladsome ear. 

Like a weakly, struggling fledgling, Man has left 
his terrene nest 

Seeking greater strength and power in his aerial 
unrest. 

Man, the earth-slaved; man, the sea-tried, feels no 
more the limiting chain; — 

Broken-shackled, now he lords it o’er the eagle’s 
wide domain. 


66 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Brains are planning, hands creating, in all nations 
of the world; 

Men are flying nearer heaven, men are dying earth¬ 
ward hurled. 

Men are striving to outstrive the strife of those who 
strove before, 

Over clouds and over earth and over sea from shore 
to shore. 

Over old historic Rheims and o’er the new land’s 
new Fort Myers, 

O’er the chalk-white cliffs of Dover, — men are 
flying, higher, higher. 

O’er the silver-flashing Channel, o’er the castle¬ 
skirting Rhine, 

O’er the festal gay-decked Hudson flies the Wonder 
Age’s sign. 

Death defying, men are flying in the trackless wil¬ 
derness, 

Shall their striving in the air-wastes be entirely 
profitless? 

Shall the pinions that are lifting men quite fail to 
uplift Man? 

Shall it be that men progress while Man remains as 
he began? 


COLUMBIA VERSE 67 

While men soar in perfect freedom through celestial 
ether vast, 

Shall Man earth-bound vainly fight the leaden dross 
that holds him fast? 


Man has now the sea, the land, the air, and shall his 
blighting curse 

Work its evils as of old now he has God’s universe? 

Some acclaim the modern wonder as th’ Infernal 
flying sword 

Out destroying e’en Destruction on the crimsoned 
charnel sward, 

And replacing blood-fumed ether, death polluted, 
rent-limb dark, 

For the bloody-sodden vineyards with the war-drunk 
corpses stark. 

Some see hell-war vanish, Universal Peace omnipo¬ 
tent 

As the calm reigns all serenely over earth when all 
outspent 

Is the momentary fury of the storm, and after one 

Brief demoniacal orgy, soon bursts put the beaming 


sun. 


68 COLUMBIA VERSE 

Evolution’s latest step has now endued the man with 
wings, — 

Will it make him nearer perfect, nearer angel in 
all things? 

Now we fly a mile to sky-ward, striving higher 
ceaselessly, — 

Will it bring us, God in Heaven, even one step 
nearer Thee? 

Simon Barr 

Verse 

O sweeter than whispers of women, 

O brighter than laughter of wine, 

Is the heart of a man that is human, 

Is the heart of a friend that is mine. 

James H. Henle 


Song 

I love you as the springtime, 

As the coming of the May, 

I love you as the rosy tint 
That goes before the day. 

My love is like the torrent 
In the morning of its might, 

Your soul is like the constant star 
Aloft, serene — and bright! 

James H. Henle 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


69 


The Sandman and the Stars 

When the twilight shades grow deep, 

And the shifting breezes creep 
Thro’ the oak leaves and the maples whispering low; 
When the stars peep out from under 
Evening’s sable cloak, and wonder 
What the busy folk are doing down below, 
Whisht! Whisht! 

In their sparkling, twinkling eyes, 

See! the dust of Sandman flies! 

There he rides, the queer old fellow, 

Thro’ the moonbeams soft and mellow, 

On his flying steed — a coal-black winged mare, 
And his long gray mantle flows 
Out behind him as he goes — 

From his bag he scatters sand dust in the air — 
Whisht! Whisht! 

How the stars all blink their eyes 
As the dust of Sandman flies! 

Little stars, you must be weary 

With your dark night watches dreary — 

See how sleepily you shed your little light! 

When he comes, the Sandman gray, 

Tuck your nodding heads away 
In the soft and cozy lap of Mother Night, 
Whisht! Whisht! 

Shut your winking, blinking eyes, 

When the dust of Sandman flies. 

Eleanor Myers 


70 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


T hanks giving 

Oh, God! ’tis good to wake, 

To breathe, to hear, to see, 

To feel the life-joy shake 
My soul with ecstasy! 

Oh, God! ’tis good to walk, 

To ride, to swim, to leap, 

To grasp a hand, to talk, 

To dream, to rest, to sleep. 

Oh, God! ’tis good to feel 

The world is great and wide; 

To know that dreams are real, 

And friends hold true when tried. 

Oh, God! ’tis good to thrill, 

To fail, to fall — and still — 

With wonder, good to fear, 

Leap up again and cheer! 

Oh, God! ’tis good to live! 

To feel the pulse beat strong; 

To love, to work, to give, 

To strive, to hope, to long! 


Florence DuB. Rees 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


7i 


A Lullaby 

Hush, little son of mine, 

Daylight is over. 

Through the tall grasses the cool shadows creep; 
The fairies’ wee babes lie asleep in the clover — 
Swaying so drowsily — sleep, darling, sleep! 

Hush, little son of mine, 

Twilight is falling, 

Winds are at rest and the birds all asleep; 
Soon baby stars will be peering and calling — 

“ Here’s such a sleepy boy — sleep, darling, 
sleep! ” 

Hush, little son of mine, 

Night is before us, 

Filled with great silences, peaceful and deep; 
Infinite love is about us and o’er us — 

God bless my little son — sleep, darling, sleep! 

Mildred De Bois 


Riverside Thoughts 

The Ferryboat 

Prosaic, plodding ferryboat, 
Forging your grim path 
Through golden waters, 


72 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


You remind me of a middle-aged woman 
Doing her duty 
In Fairyland. 

The Schooner 

Wild bird from distant waters, 

Untamed ship of strange coasts, 

Full of the romance and pathos of old voyages, 
What are you doing here, 

Where little tugs bustle importantly 
About their idle business 

And the dingy old scows wallow in sluggish water? 
Did some one send you 
To remind us 

Who walk by the riverside, 

Of dangerous rocks and crashing billows? 

Isabel E. Rathborne 


A Sonnet 

Still stand the everlasting hills, steadfast, 
Unchanged but by the passing of the hours, 

The lazy shadows by the soft clouds cast, 

Or season’s change from sleet to summer flowers. 
Time and the hearts of men go traveling by, 
Seeking that promised rest that shall be sweet, 
Searching the hollow dwellings of the high, 

And lo, rest lies unbidden at their feet. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


73 


So ,God, of His great Heart, hath fashioned man 
Steadfast and true, to be a ready friend, 
All-knowing and beyond all wisdom wise, 
Centuries untold ere ever time began. 

Strong to endure, unchanging to the end, 

Yet ever new before Love’s wond’ring eyes. 

Rhoda Erskine 


Amberley 

Last night I dreamed of Amberley 
Among the Sussex Downs, 

Of smiling gardened Amberley, 

Of sunny chalk-cliffed Amberley, 
Of sleepy thatched-roofed Amberley, 
Among the Sussex Downs. 

I stood upon a dew-pan’s rim 
Atop the Sussex Downs, 

The gabled roofs seemed near to me, 
The winding street so dear to me, 
Each stone below was clear to me 
Atop the Sussex Downs. 

I wandered into Amberley 
Among the Sussex Downs. 

A garden gate was hanging wide, 

I tiptoed near, and peeped inside, 

To see what loveliness could hide 
Among the Sussex Downs. 


4 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


The path was lined with mallows pink, 

So near the Sussex Downs. 

Love-in-a-mist, and roses, too, 

Sweet scented rosemary and rue, 

Bright hollyhocks against black yew, 

Grew near the Sussex Downs. 

I heard the rushing Arundel 
Sing of the Sussex Downs. — 

The beckoning willows at its edge, 

The waving reeds, the whispering sedge, 
Bade me look through the garden hedge — 
Sang of the Sussex Downs. 

Mary A. Jennings 


Immortality 

Her soul went with the falling leaves, 
And with the fading rose of day. 

To where the loom of beauty weaves — 
Her soul went with the falling leaves, 
New dawns from dying twilight eves, 
Old autumns into bloom of May. . . . 

Her soul went with the falling leaves, 
And with the fading rose of day. . . . 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


75 


Fascettes 

I have been melancholy: 

I have been melancholy all day: 

An opera tune from a street-organ 
Drifted in through my study-window 
As I sat 

Reading of battles of long ago. 

Ponderous Volume: 

I shall not take you down, 

You ponderous volume with the gilt edges. 

I mistrust you. 

The elegant place you occupy upon the shelf 
Cannot persuade you to my soul. 

Come, little book of verse, you and I! 

Gustav Davidson 


Consolation 

Come to me in the night, — 

The hour of dying winds and moon-swathed light — 
And bring with thee what heartaches and what cares; 
What daily fears, what sins, what needful prayers 
With which thou feelst oppressed. 

And I will still the troubled riot 
In thy heart, 

And fill it with my own deep sense of quiet 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


76 

’Til thou art 
Becalmed, and at rest, 

And the whole sad world of seeming 
Will be lost whilst thou art dreaming 
On my breast! 

Gustav Davidson 


Lament 

I did not think that men could hate so much, 

Knowing how little they could love; nor dreamed 
That human hearts could wither at a touch, 

So full of beauty, so full of life they seemed. 
The barren gifts, the wasted strife, the tears, 

The bleeding hands, the dumb despair, the cry 
Of wild impassioned sorrow that the years 
Shall barricade in music till we die, 

The empty vigil and the wearying pain 

And all the grief, the wounds that hate can bring 
Have crushed more worlds than we shall ever gain, 
Silenced more songs than we shall ever sing; 
And death that tramples on our souls with passion, 
Has kissed our lips too long to know compassion. 


William Hillman 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


77 


To - 

When the night comes, and we are laid to sleep, 
Deep within the darkness, 

Where cheeks grow pale and eyes no longer weep, 

Ah! little heart, thy soul 

Will pass like thistledown along the wind 

And touch some happy soil, 

Or flit like some gray moth, that yearns to bind 
Its wings unto a star. 

To the wild grasses and the silent sky 
We shall untimely go. 

And love will crumble down to clay and die, 

Ere thou and I shall know. 

Cease, cease thy vain dreams and endless yearning, 
Heaven’s glory is thine, 

But while limbs and heart and soul are burning 
Come press thy lips on mine. 

William Hillman 


Fluent 

Surely, surely all things pass 
As shadows move across a glass. 

Each, pallid day draws close the shred 
Of tattered sunset — and is fled. 
Through the august and silent night 
The perished stars give ghostly light. 



78 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Dust takes many shapes that must 
All resolve again to dust. 

And every heart-beat, every breath 
Is a gift from life to death. 

Love, despair — they go the way 
Of the finite lives that stray 
As shadows move across a glass 
Surely, surely all things pass. 

Babette Deutsch 


Enchantment 

I think there is a touch of madness in you: 

You have been drunk on fairy dew! Your heart 
Holds fairies, and your eyes are dark with dreams 
For you the sea below the poplars spoke 
With windy voice, of those who drift to dust 
Yet do not die; for you the dawn leaped up, 

And slow dusk pinned her purple with a star. 

Yours the strange joy that colors all the world, 
Bestowed upon your thousand-year-old soul 
In its last birth; when your lithe body lay 
Pressing the soft sward near the living pool 
In the hushed darkness, till the earth grew warm 
With mother passion. So it was you won 
Your rare moon-madness, while you were asleep — 
Or trysting with Dalua, far away. 

Babette Deutsch 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


79 


Heroic 

These huge old horses lumber through the snow 
In epic travail. 

Beowulf on his knees to throttle Grendel 
Strove like one of these. 

The hammer-blow of gusty winds 
Falls like Cuchulain in his overthrow; 

Traffic about their feet like roaring seas. 

They stumble on 

Loaded and lashed across the cobbled street. 
Laboring in defeat 
Toward smoldering sunset 
As toward the dawn. 

Babette Deutsch 


The Death of a Child 

Are you at ease now? Do you suck content 
From death’s dark nipple pressed to your pale lips; 
Now that the fever of the day is spent 
And anguish slips 
From the small limbs, 

And you lie lapped in rest, 

The young head pillowed soft upon that iron breast. 
No, you are quiet, 

And forever, though 

For us the silence is so loud with tears, 


8o 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Wherein we hear the dreadful-footed years 
Echoing, but your quick laughter never; 

Never your stumbling run, your sudden face 
Thrust in bright scorn upon our solemn fears. 
Now the dark mother holds you close; O, you 
We loved so, how you lie 
So strangely still, unmoved so utterly, 

Dear yet, but oh, a little alien too. 

Babette Deutsch 


Surfeit 

It is enough! The perfume numbs my brain; 

Upon dead nerves your tropic passion plays; 

From your caresses the very flesh retreats — 
Enough! It is enough! 

The sun has grown too warm, the birds too sweet, 
The buds too crimson — and your eyes too near; 

Too well I know each move, each smile, each 
word — 

Enough! It is enough! 

It is enough! Away — let me away 
To where hailstones sting against the cheek, 

Let me away to fight, to weep, to live — 

Away! It is enough! 

Lillian Soskin 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


81 


The Road 

O, I’m free of friend and free of foe, 
And my lover left me long ago, 

And the world is little and far; 
There’s not a body cares or knows, 

I follow where the west wind blows, 

My eyes are on a star. 

And no one asks me: “Why so late? ” 
The like of me has never a mate, 

It’s just the open road and I; 

The touch of the wind is swift and sweet, 
I run on eager restless feet 
Into the open sky. 

Ah! times long past I was not free, 
When love and longing laid on me 
Their little wistful hands; 

O! sweeter it was to make a dream, 

To see the moving world a-gleam 
With golden fairy strands. 

But now I’m free of friend and foe, 

My lover left me long ago, 

And all is great and still; 

This spirit joy I’d never known, 

To be alone, to be alone — 

There’s starlight on the hill. 


Olga Marx 


82 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


On the Death of a. Child 

The heavens glowed within his eyes 
The sunlight gleamed amid his hair; 

Red roses wildly leaped to life 

To make my blossoms seem more fair. 

The heavens are dimmed with shadow clouds, 
The roses wither in the night; — 

My little flower is crushed and dead, 

My little flower that sought the light. 

Olga Marx 

Nocturne 

The plum-tree sheds its blossoms, 

A cloud has veiled the light, 

The linnet ceased his singing, — 

My little love, good-night. 

I’ll strew thy bed with blossoms 
So fragrant and so white, 

And wind them ’mid thy tresses — 

My little love — good-night. 


Olga Marx 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


83 


Texas 

The days have been desolate days — 

No sunshine, no scarlet sun-dipped clouds. 

Just gray mists and wearisome things 
And oh! how I have longed for my land of yellow 
daisies and tall stout purple asters, 

Where the sun laughs a round good laugh all the 
year round, 

From the first month to the last, 

And the bird songs sound like chimes of silver, 
Stolen from yesterday’s last shimmering gleams. 

Oh, it’s a wonderful land, my land! 

There is a coastland, riverland, blackland and sandy 
land, 

And the sun shines all the while, 

There are mountains, too, though perhaps 
You would say they are but mole-furrows, 

Left by ancient sightless and furry folk, 

But there are flowers on these mole-furrows, moun¬ 
tain poppies, goldenrod, and fainting-blooms, 
And everywhere there is old grandfather Cactus 
As stolid and cold looking as the very old face of 
a Chinaman. 

Then the prairies — vast, windswept, and warm, 
Have you ever seen them? 

They are great seas that have long been dried up, 


84 COLUMBIA VERSE 

How winds and burning suns have sucked up their 
waters 

And left them like the crumpled carcass of a long- 
dead buffalo — 

Huge and vast and still — 

I have seen them often — 

In the winter, bleak and bare, 

In the summer, brown and sere, 

And I always think — 

“ Dust to dust returneth.” 

Here, then, is the sandpile — vast, windswept, and 
sun-kissed — 

Down on the coast it is different — 

The broad expanse of the gulf sends breezes, warm 
and salt, to brush dark, heavy-leafed palms — 
Ships come into port — 

Ships go out — 

Brothers of mankind — 

Black and Brown, White and Yellow 
Come together from the East and West, 

From North and South, — 

Confused talk — the babble of tongues — hushed in 
the sound of a storm from the sea — 

The billows froth and foam, 

Lap the great white sea-wall like the tongue of a 
maddened dog, 

Rush over the crest — and cities — in the darkness 
— are silent — drowned. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


85 


But oh! the exquisite beauty of the 
Valleys and riverlands 

As undisturbed and peaceful as a little child gently 
sleeping — 

Tall, white houses and gardens — 

Gardens with magnolias, white bloomed and heavy 
petalled, 

Jasmine with its wild sweet scent of unknown 
things — 

Strange lands and the mockery of night 
And soft-scented bay, purple bell-shaped, 

Cotton fields white with bloom, 

Darkies in gay calicoes, dancing and singing — 
Music all the time — 

Music in the trees — music in the rippling waters. 

Oh, it’s a wonderful land, my land! 

So windswept, so sunkissed, and so rainblessed! 

Jewell Wurtsbaugh 


The Reprobate 

Thou merry bibbler at thy mother’s breast, 

Thou scarce-invited, chronic dinner-guest, 

What wouldst thou with that sad, magnetic moon 
Whose saffron succulence thou leerest at? 

Is not thy present business without that 
Luxuriance for any lyric loon? 


86 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Thou battener on thy mother’s loveliness, 

Thou dear, voluptuous little libertine, 

How art thou blind to all thy roseate scene 
That now thy vandal fingers can address 
Their itching invitation to the sky, 

Forsaking ready heaven for rash hope? 

If, then, thou couldst attain thy tinsel gaud 
There glittering in the bosom of the night, 
What wouldst thou with it having got it? 

Oh! thou erotic Master Bumble-bee, 

For half of what thou hast — I’d garrote thee! 
And so I call thee fool — yet what am I 
That I should wish to hang thee in the rope 
I merit triple-ply in my own right? 

How like thou art to man thus to defraud 
Thine own enjoyment of things exquisite 
Already granted, that thou mayest fulfil 
Thine ingrate notion of thy better good! 

Unless the offered manna meets our mood, 

We would fain starve to gratify our will; 

Such things as God has put within our reach, 

We spurn aside impatiently to teach 

This cosmic circumstance our chaste demands — 

The moon is quite appropriate as it stands! 


Francis T. Kimball 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


87 


In the Gemot 

Yesterday in the Gemot, a student, 

Whose pasty face 
And glowing ears 

Suggested Common’s country sausages 
And Ohlker’s whipped cream sundaes, 

Sat reading 

With all undivided attention 
That comprised brief intervals 
Between coarse jokes 
That scraped their way 
Through heavy air, — 

Sat reading with wrinkled forehead 

And eyes moistened with cigarette smoke — 

Thoreau’s Walden. 

J. P. Bowles 

Epitaph on Icarus 

Here lieth that presumptuous one, 

Who dreamt that he might touch the sun, 
And fell, accursed, from Heaven’s blue. 

* * * * * * * 

But think, ye gods, how high he flew! 


Chrystene Straiton 


88 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Two Sonnets 

Lux Aeterna 

There will of course be other perfect days, 
And crystal sunset clouds again will glow 
In windless glory; I once more will gaze 
In wonder while the silent waters flow. 
Because this breathless peace does not endure, 
I do not weep; the punctual seasons send 
Time and again this calm; such gifts secure, 
This incidental darkness cannot end. 

No fleeting magic this, but ordered, clear, 
Ever renewed the twilight fires must burn, 
And I live lightly sure that year to year 
These fragile deathless colors will return. 
Yet now that all the radiance has passed, 

I sigh as though this day had been the last. 


After a Fortnight of Summer Storm 

I know there is no meaning in the mist 
That wraps in gray this mountain-girdled shore, 
Nor in these loud black waves once moonlight kissed, 
Nor in the tempests that untimely roar; 

I cannot read a language in the surge 
Of breakers; there is no immortal sign 
In midnight winds; I hear no Demi-Urge 
Hiss in the storm its syllables divine. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


89 


I am too lessoned in the changeless law 
Behind the beauty of this cloud-banked gloom, 

To mark in it with simple trembling awe 
God’s reckless accents of avenging doom. 

And while thus Reason crushes dreams and fears, 
Eternity keeps thundering in my ears. 

Irwin Edman 


Justice 

I give you so much more than justice. Oh, 

How loath I am to judge you! All my pride 
Lies in the scales against your sin. I know 
Your faults; despairingly I see them grow. 

And I have never wavered from your side. 

I call them baseless fancies; in my wild 
Defence of you foolishly waive them all, 

Fierce for your honor, weakly reconciled 
To this poor quibble. My strong code is mild 
For your necessity, stoops to your fall. 

Behold you now, cheaply regenerate, 

Clean of your faults I strip you of. In vain! 
You are not you, stripped of each lovable trait 
I loved in you; your charms are intricate 

In those faults, are all stained with their bright 
stain. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


90 

Let me not judge! Excuses by the score 
Champion you: a bleak, untempered youth 
And childhood, — poverty, a bolted door 
Debarring you from hope. Your heart was sore, 
Yet still with lips and heart you served your high 
Truth. 

And then success swept you to sudden fame 

Almost against your will, — marvellous story 
Of utter courage. You won the ruthless game 
By your own strength; then quaffed with eyes of 
flame 

That first impetuous deep drink of glory. 

And I drank too. Was not your triumph mine? 

Oh, who could that exultant glory check? 

It thundered in our reeling heads like wine. 

How could we recognize it for the sign 
Of your disintegration, our life’s wreck? 

You ask for justice. My whole life I throw 
Beneath your feet with no disturbing fear: 

You could climb back were you sunk twice as low, 
Pinioned in the deepest depths of hell. You know 
How much I give you more than justice, dear. 


Cornelia Geer 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


9 i 


Pageantry 

The Storm 

Cross giants on the Mountain 
Shake dice in a box of rock, 

And quarrel. 

Old Man Bald Top pokes his sopping head 
Through his flimsy bath towel of white mist. 

The game is done. 

Evening 

Soft twilight — 

I linger on my climb for the cows. 

In the young dusk the dog and I 
Trail behind the straggling herd. 

The mountains put on their mourning for the 
Artist of God 

Who spilled his colors on the sky back of Lone¬ 
some Mountain, 

And died. 

The meek cows step down the steep slope 
Kicking the stones into voices 
That echo 
Over the valley. 


John Landon Cooley 


92 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Acrostic 

(In the style of the Cavalier Poets) 

Blessed is he that knows Milady’s grace, 

Even that sees her footprint in the sand. 

Roses as jonquils are beside her face, 

Taper and delicate her little hand. 

Heaven is found within her smile so dear, 

And by her eyes a man his course may steer. 

W. H. Hanemann 


Separation 

Where the line of the oak-wood pauses, 
Drawn back from its touch with the sea, 

And the gray salt mists of the marshes 
Drip down from the inland tree; 

Where the wild snipe’s cry in the dawning 
Echoes the heron’s boom, 

And the sea weed pennons the elders 
Blown high with the last storm’s spume; 
Where bleak in the cold of winter 
The wild duck starves on the bogs, 

And the eel-grass slowly rotting 
Is penned by the driftwood logs: 

There the wind in the sedge is lonely, 

And the waves beat high on the shore, 

For the trees of the upland, pausing, 

Grow near to the shore no more. 

G. S. Horan 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


93 


Marma 

At mighty Marma mid the mountain shade 
Forever sit the seven gods of Jade. 

Forever throned, cross-legged before their shrines of 
gold, 

Forever living, and yet never old. 

Nor love, nor hatred fills their jeweled eyes, 

Nor move their fingers, pointing to the skies; 

Nor smoldering sorrow stirs their slumbering, slant¬ 
eyed souls — 

Each orb a lotus seed, a crescent rolls. 

But when, at dawn the citron rays sink through 
And splash with living jasper shades once blue, 

Some prince turns beggar on his spirit’s stained be¬ 
half— 

With curved lips mocking, do the gods not laugh? 

The milk moon pearls the bamboo’s tinkling spears 
As through the Seven, peacock-flamed, she peers. . . . 
A prostrate woman weeps — that scintillating glow, 
Was it the drop of two and twelve great tears? 


Egroeg du Caire 


94 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Prefare 

O ye for whom proud sires bled 
That liberty might be your boast, 

Look on the bleeding ranks of dead, 

Look on the martyred host! 

Behold a thousand rivers red 
With guiltless blood by butchers shed! 

Charred fields behold! Behold the bread 
Snatched from ten million mouths unfed 
Behold! —and count the cost! 

Give ear to that despairing cry 
Uplifted by a stricken land! 

Mark ye the freemen’s moans who lie 
Beneath the despot’s hand! 

List to a trampled people’s sigh! 

List to the curse borne up on high, 

By mothers breathed as children die! 

Hark to the wailing as they fly 
Their homes before the brand! 

Hear well! Gaze long! —and know your fate! 

Ye too may feel the tyrant’s arm; 

Your dear ones, too, like sorrows wait; 

A ruined Europe sounds alarm! 

Awake! Your Country calls! Too late 
Ye may bewail a fallen State! 

Prepare! — this is no time to hesitate; 

Make haste! Your ensigns elevate! 

The torch of Freedom shield from harm! 

William R. Anderson, Jr. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


95 


Tears 

When I was a child my nurse would say 
If ever she saw me cry: 

“ Save your tears 
For the coming years 
— You’ll need them by and by.” 


So I’d stop; but at night I’d wonder 
As I drifted off to sleep, 

Why I’d need my tears 
For the coming years, 

— Now I know and cannot weep. 

Dorothy Burne 


Regret 

Bird, dim in the high white stretches of the sky, 
My ear will never catch the thrilling tone 
Of what thou singest to infinity; 

Yet do I marvel slight on this alone, 

But with more wistful wonder, think of thee 
Once more amid the borders of a tree, 

Thy song no whit less joyful in the nest, 

Nor plaintive of the narrow foliage, 

Than when thy soaring led beyond the west. 


96 COLUMBIA VERSE 

Not of thy strength of flight, thy boundless fling, 
Does envy make me sad, 

But of the precious saneness of thy way. 

For when my soul in dreaming takes to wing 
To range Time’s firmament, my song is glad, 
But when returning from the far-away, 

My soul grows restive, even fails to sing 
Within the simple limits of a day. 

Mortimer J. Adler 


Fragments 

As Winter fleeing 

Leaves the shreds of its ermine 

To be crunched into murk, 

So the fearless leave 
Their names. 

Prudish the clouds 
That fluff their skirts 
About the moon 
To hide 

Her soft, unblushing nudity. 
Chopin — 

A poet, 

Playing with toy bricks 
Of tone. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


97 


Sunset — 

The hearth of God 
Glowing with the pyre 
On which 

Man’s light is sacrificed. 

— Hordes of blue-black elephants racing across the 

sky, 

— Pink tints kindled by the sparks from their crash¬ 

ing hoofs, 

— Then darkness. 

Like a satyr 
The sun 
Burns deeply 

Into the cool, grey robes of my sorrow. 

The moon — 

A saucepan 

Brimming with the light of suns. 

Rain — 

Long chill fingers 
Stroking firmly 

The feverish forehead of the earth. 

Morning is like a virgin 

Dropping the gossamer veilings of mist 

Before the crimson passion of the rising sun. 

Mortimer J. Adler 


98 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


On the Clumsiness of a Bee 

In the early morning’s damp sunrise hour 
I saw a bee hovering over a flower. 

Rose liquor and clematis wine 
Had Ailed his soul with song divine; 

Deep were his draughts the warm night through, 
Quaffed in caverns weighed with dew. 

Many an antic had been played 

Ere the world awoke from sleep and shade. 

Oft on petals smooth he slipped, 

Or over tangled stamens tripped, 

And headlong in the pollen roll’d 
To spring up dusted o’er with gold; 

His heavy-laden feet might stumble 
Against some bud, and down he’d tumble 
Amongst the grass — Now mend your prances, 
O bee, for swiftly the dawn advances! 

John B. DeMille 


An Old New England Graveyard 

Near the shore, a plot of ground 
Hems a mouldering graveyard round; 

And there is many a grassy mound, 

Where Day and Night and Day go by, 
And bring no touch of human sound. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


99 


Washing of the lonely seas, 

Shaking of the guardian trees, 

Piping of the salty breeze; 

Day and Night and Day go by 
To the endless tune of these. 

Or when, as winds and waters keep 
A hush more dead than any sleep, 

Still morns to stiller evenings creep, 

And Day and Night and Day go by; 
Here silence is most deep. 

Sleeping flesh has lapsed from pain 
Into Nature’s wide domain, 

Sown by winds with seed and grain, 

As Day and Night and Day go by, 

And hoard June’s sun and April’s rain. 

Here fresh funeral tears were shed; 

But now the graves are also dead, 

And ivy from the ash-trees spread, 

As Day and Night and Day go by — 
And stars move calmly overhead. 

John B. DeMille 



100 COLUMBIA VERSE 

Red Chevron 

I muse on days in cadence barked 
And thoughts that bit the brain, 

A clean fight missed, 

A letter kissed, 

A furlough hard to gain. 

The buddies there of hike and mess — 

A few I cuss, but more I bless — 

(Fate’s ways with men are fathomless, 

I learned that in the Army.) 

Eve seen men rage with silent lips, 

And some were dogged by smut, 

And men, full-grown, 

Whose brains were sown 
With dark, were in a rut; 

A few whose eyes were eyes of crooks, 

And those who’d loom up fine in books. 

Oh — some were captains, some were cooks! 
(A queer bunch that—the Army.) 

The picture comes — a barrack stove, 

Its group, — who smoke and spit, 

Would give their view 
On who was who, 

With gay uncensored wit. 

They often swore — they’d never sob; 

They sang and yelled like Hell’s own mob — 
Well, Mac, so long — I’m in a job . . . 

I’m out of this man’s Army. 


O’Grady Sezz 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


IOI 


Fraternity 

tonight — 

My thoughts swing back to something in my youth — 
It was a myth that swallowed up my soul 
At Cumberland ... You smile at this old name. 
Never mind smiling, for although it was 
An old freshwater university, 

Each of its twelve fraternities held high 
Its head, gorged fat and lazy on self-esteem. 

It was a great month for me, a young Freshman: 
Rushing and bidding and goating and the rest: 

The Betas bid me, but at last I went 

Phi Kappa Sigma . . . Ah, the song we sang, 

That song of gold: “We shall be friends forever, 
Tho’ seasons change.” Ah, I remember well 
The springtides of my youth. Along with me 
Jack Frew and Andrew Bellman took the vow: 

Ed Wakeman, too, the best liked chap in class, 

A lively fellow but not boisterous. 

And more besides. They read the ritual 
To nine of us that night. 


I was soul-thrilled 

By the grave voices, by the flickering flame, 

By the dark coffin and the murky shroud, 

And by the hooded figures. Everything 
Concentered to one breathing principle — 


102 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Fraternity. “ We shall be friends forever! ” 

Ed Wakeman was beside me as we swore 
To reverence the name eternally — 

Phi Kappa Sigma, and its mysteries. 

Choked with his feeling, Ed’s clear voice was faint, 
Giving the pledge. I, too, was all athrill 
From thinking on the everlasting bond 
Enfolding us that night. . . . 


An hour ago 

I recognized our waiter. You called him clumsy . . . 
That was Ed Wakeman. — 

Bound to me till death: 

You know the vow: “ We shall be friends forever, 
Tho’ seasons change. No earthly cause will sever —” 

Virgil Markham 

Winter Shadows 

Shadows have music, too, and shadows know 
Passion and sensibility and pain. 

Half of my life across the snow I throw 
In shadow — It will dwell with me again 
When Spring, the blossom-haunted, walks the earth 
Blessing the meadows with a song of birth. 


Charles A. Wagner 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


103 


Beyond 

Winds have a story for the trees, 

And rain has song, 

But there is more than wind or rain 
For which trees long. 

Leaves will play tag, like swift small boys, 
With a moon-beam, 

But there is more than moon or stars 
Of which trees dream. 

Bathing in dawns and blue twilights, 
Browned in the sod, 

Trees do not need to walk the earth 
To dream of God. 

Charles A. Wagner 

The Coming of Autumn 

1 

All summer have I sat in thought, 

Burned my poor brain 
And, through lamps of stars, 

Walked with the pain. 

“ It is not long,” my soul would say, 

“ It is not long.” 

Soon Autumn will come down to me, 

Crazy with song. 

She will toe-dance with gypsy-brown feet 
Scratching, scratching along the street. 


104 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


ii 

I will not say these books are dead, 

With Summer bending at my door; 

A poet’s spirit walks by day 
When sunlight falls upon the floor, 

And sings from off the shelf, and lives; 
O we are all God’s fugitives! 

in 

All night the twinkling needles wove 
A diamond dress of dew, 

An angry father, came the wind 
And tore the meshes through; 

But silently the Prince of Light 
Stole up and snatched the naked sprite! 

IV 

In the morning steadily 
I walk down the lawn, 

I thrust my bare feet through the dew, 
Happy I was born. 

The quiet is a crystal cup 

That splinters when the birds are up. 

v 

Climbing over a county of hillls 
Is no play, 

And when a man is thirsty 
The rocks are in his way. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


The sun set in a harbor 
Of waters lit like flame, 

But one must see a sunset, 

For words are not the same. 

There was a farmer lad more kind 
Than sixty sunsets are, 

He’d rather fetch a mug of milk 
Than gossip with a star! 

VI 

Before I even knew 
The blossoms died, 

The trucks came rumbling down 
Bulging barrels at the side, 

In which the apples ride. 

They should float apples down the river 
That men might recognize the Giver. . . 

VII 

Little grains of dust 
Blown from foreign lands, 

Clinging to earth forever, 

These are my hands; 

O sad years in the house I know! 

O dead leaves dropping on eternal snow 


io6 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


VIII 

Through the barren orchard 
The sky is pale and sad, 

The trees are shriveled women 
Who once were color-clad. 

I try to tell them Spring will sow 
New blossoms that are white as snow. 

Charles A. Wagner 

The Seer 

Throughout the winding, torpid day I heard 
The onward-sipping undertones of voices 
Fall about me, and laughter that rejoices 
In the transient glory of a transient word. 

Now I have heard the seer — the mystery 
Of rarer, starlit regions in his face — 

Lay bare in music, in a flitting space 
Of time, words reaching to infinity. . . . 

I am fulfilled of music, perfect chords 
That linger. And I think of studded hordes 
Of moonbeams, trickling on dark, shrouded trees, 
Like threaded tears; and of a dark stream, twining 
Over jet ledges, when the moonbeams freeze 
It silver, and it flows on purling, shining. . . . 

LOUIS ZUKOFSKY 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


107 


Sun and Rainbow 

I 

Life is color, and a shout 

Of horns amid grey sleeping hills; 

Life is a rainbow melody of sound 
And the light the sun spills. 

II 

Raise your hand and shade your eyes 
Before this wonder of the skies! 

The round heaven shouts with color, 

A new earth picks up the sound; 

The swift winds clash their cymbals, 

And trees rise glorious from the ground. 

The sun is spilling down its gold, 

The earth drinks to its fill; 

There is sun and laughter on the waters, 

And silence is a sound where hills are still. 

The heaven hangs rain, and flame is on the 
mountains, 

The sun pours down its gold like spray of many 
fountains. 

A rainbow has been spun 
Of jewelled rain and sun. 


108 COLUMBIA VERSE 

in 

Life is color, and a shout 

Of horns amid grey sleeping hills; 

Life is a rainbow arch 

And the fire it spills. _ „ 

Louis Zukofsky 


Louis XIV Chamber 

(Metropolitan Museum) 

There must be shadows in these mirror spaces, 
Flowing like air, unshadowed as they tread: 
Strange-eyed they seek this room — these silent 
dead 

With brows like clouded sun and rain-grey faces. 
Yes, and they sat here once in silks and laces, 

Brave lovers and their loved ones, head to head, 
While nights gave birth to flowers, and fountains 
sped 

Their spray — and music falling left no traces. 

I wonder how they feel if they return — 

These who sipped life as from a golden urn, 

As we look here and there, and idly say, 

At this resplendent and yet saddening show — 

Lacquer, carved gold, and glass that glares like 
day — 

“ It seems they left us but an hour ago.” 

Louis Zukofsky 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


109 


Procession of Lanterns 

Then near midnight the curved young moon 
Shuddered and hid in a sombre cloak, 

And lanes of blossoms seemed to swoon 
As an unleashed shower of petals broke 
In a flutter of breeze, dim birds a-flight 
In slow-winged myriads; flakes of white 
Ash from the censer of fields in flower 
Drifting away in the silent hour 
To hide from the far chant borne on the breeze 
And stirring with fear the whispering trees. 
Like fireflies down the distant lane, 

Or balls of light swung on a chain, 

A black-robed measured procession came, 

Unreal in the darts of lantern-flame; 

Cowled and hooded as for death, 

Till the night wind hushed its sighing breath. 
And the flames of torches quiver and flare 
On a pallid face, and eyes that stare 
At stars above, and seem to see 
Beyond their burning mystery. 

And the rigid limbs mold their form below 
The black robe flaked with a blossom-snow, 

And the grim monks bear with mournful tread 
The pall to the dismal tomb of the dead. 

The night wind chills the swaying flame 
And whispers woes that none might name, 

With prying fingers dares to steal 
Caresses that he does not feel, 


I 10 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Nor watch the petals float and wheel 
On wings of lacy gossamer, 

While round him shadows coil and stir, 

Lift evil heads to strike, and flee 
Back to night’s purple mystery. 

And like a carven effigy, 

Reposing on the tomb of kings 
In marble immobility 

With mournful pace his still form swings. 

No poet’s pent-up threnody 

That bursts its measured bonds and sings 

In broken syllables of grief 

Against life’s final thief, 

Could steal words from a shrouded sky 
To halt death’s couriers winding by. 

But like the sob of a broken lyre, 

The wailing chant mounts higher, higher, 

In its prayers for the soul; 

And over fields shadowed and quiet 
Bars of red flame leap in riot, 

Lap with tongues of their desire 
At the sprays of scented blossoms like foam on a 
darkened sea; 

Flooding them like new-lit stars 
With a light of golden fire, 

Till the restless, darting tongues 
Pale in the vault’s black mystery, 

That muffles the chant’s despairing cry 

To rise on the wind and die . . . and die. . . . 

Stanley Hart 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


111 


How He Turned Out 

When he was young his parents saw (as parents by 
the millions see), 

That Rollo had an intellect of quite unequalled bril¬ 
liancy; 

They started in his training from the hour of his 
nativity, 

And carefully they cultivated every bright proclivity. 

At eight, he ate up authors like a literary cannibal, 

At nine, he mastered Latin as the Latins mastered 
Hannibal; 

At ten, he knew astronomy and differential calculus, 

And at eleven he could dissect the tiniest animalculus. 

At twelve, he learned orthometry, and started in to 
master all 

The different kinds of poetry, the lyric and the 
pastoral, 

The epic and dramatic, the descriptive and didactical, 

With lessons theoretical and exercises practical. 


Music he learned — the old and sweet, the up-to- 
date and hideous; 

He painted like Praxiteles and modeled like a Phidias; 
In language he was polyglot, in rhetoric, Johnsonian, 
In eloquence Websterian, in diction, Ciceronian. 


112 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


At last, with learning that would set an ordinary 
head a-gog, 

His education far outshone his most proficient peda- 
g°g; 

And so he entered life, with all his lore to lift the 
lid for him — 

And what do you imagine that his erudition did for 
him? 

Alas! I fear the truth will shock you, rather than 
amuse you all — 

To those who’ve read this sort of verse, the sequel 
is unusual; 

This man (it’s hard on humor, for it breaks the well- 
known laws of it), 

Was happier for his learning, and a great success 
because of it. 

C. D. 


The Valley of Lost Steps 

I stood nigh the Valley of Steps That Are Lost 
And listened to echoes that come and go 
Like breezes through the fingers of the trees. 

The tiny step of a toddling child 
Who knew not the path ahead; 

The jerky beat of a vigorous youth 
Who hustled toward quick success; 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


113 

The clump and thump of an army boot 
Which tramped the long, long, one-way road 
To the parapet in France; 

The clodding plod of a routine man 
Who followed the rut of environment; 

The mincing patter of debutante 
Down the Aisle of Life 
With its rosy hedges; 

The weary, dreary shuffle of woman 

Who trudged the sands of a household wilderness. 


But as they neared the Valley of Lost Steps 
Their cadences were joined 
In one vast sympathy 
As if it were but one, 

And only one 

Who trod in dignity deliberate 
Toward the Valley where bare feet 
Dance noiselessly on velvet grass. 

David P. Sentner 


Logs 

Two logs met in a fire-place; 

Each fell in love at first touch. 

“ Will you lean on me forever? ” 
Said the hard cedar wood. 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


“ Nothing shall part us! ” 

Swore the soft pine wood. 

And their flame of love 
Ascended as they kissed. 

But soon the fire dwindled unto ashes 
And their love lay cold upon the hearth. 

David P. Sentner 


The Cham 

“ 11 est bien fatigue! ” 

These are the words that come to me 
Over and over the whole day long; 
“ II est bien fatigue ” — 

The wistful fragment of a song 
Singing itself in my memory. 


We were resting beneath a friendly oak 
In the shaded grounds of an old chateau, 

Two children weary of their play, 

And my eyes were closed, though you did not know 

I could not sleep; then someone spoke 
And harshly questioned our presence there, 

And ever so softly I heard you say, 

Simple and sweet, with infinite care, — 

<c 11 est bien fatigue y 

II est bien fatigue! ” 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


1 15 

“ 1L est bien fatigue” 

As you were plaiting flowers for me, 

Daisy on daisy with tender care, 

“ 11 est bien fatigue ” 

And you thought you were weaving a wreath for 
my hair, 

But it was a chain for the heart of me! 


Yes, I have done with venturing, 

And long is the road to little Blanquefort, 

And the old chateau is so far away 

I cannot go there any more, 

But my heart is there a captive thing 
Bound with a slender daisy chain, 

As ever throughout the long, long day 
Your little words come back again, — 

“ 11 est bien fatigue y 

II est bien fatigue! ” 

Warner Tufts 


Sonnet 

I know the pure delight a young god feels, — 
For in my dreams my goddess comes to me, 
Arrayed in whitely mystic majesty 
Of clouds. Just as the blue of heav’n reveals 
But to the wise its depth, so her clear gaze 
Reveals a vision of the Infinite; 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


116 

As the chastely chiseled moon is exquisite, 

So is her face; and radiant as the rays 
Of any rising sun, — her golden hair. 

She smiles, — and wakes a dear, half-dread desire, — 
She stoops to kiss my lips, and turns to fire 
My soul, which burns in bliss beyond compare — 

In ecstasy of knowing we are one 
With the light and life of the eternal sun. 

Chester A. Arthur, Jr. 


Survival 

Now lies the world within the crypts of space, 
Snow-shrouded, altared under manifold 
Tapers of stars, as there might lie of old 
Some virgin vaulted ’mong her vanished race; 
Wrapped in the lover-wind’s insane embrace 

And crushed by his tumultuous grief, but cold 
To all his futile passion uncontrolled 
And rain of tears time only can erase. 

Yet, as beneath an oppressive funeral-fold, 

Palled with untold tomorrows, one might trace 
Still fair the features of some death-stilled face, 
And look one’s last on beauty, half-consoled, — 
Under the year’s recurrent tides and moods 
Unfathomable quiet bides and broods. 


Daniel T. Walden 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


i 


l 7 


Chinese Etchings 

The wild geese flee southward silently. 

The autumn wind tugs at my thin sleeves. 

I stand in my garden 

And with hands cupped over the chrysanthemum, 
Melt away the frost-lace. 

Dushan Podgorshek 


Child-Poems 

1. Skyrocket 

Skyrocket, where do you go when your last bright 
spark is spent? 

Do you become but a shapeless mass of wood and 
cardboard bent? 

Or do you go through endless night and hobnob with 
the stars, 

And speed along through spaces vast until you come 
to Mars? 

Or do you never die at all, but keep your sparks a-light 

And go so far, your golden glare passes from human 
sight? 

Eve heard it said, you give your trillion star-eyes to 
the dawn; 

I’d like to think you never stop, but just fly on and 
on! 


118 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


11 . Playing Blocks 

Little boy, little boy, with your sunny, tousled hair, 

In your gay lettered blocks, do you find castles fair? 

You look so very serious, a-sitting in the sun, 

Pray, do you heap them, block on block, just because 
it’s fun? 

When I was small, oh, long ago, I played with 
blocks myself, 

And, oh, how hard I cried at night when Nurse put 
them on the shelf! 

I vowed that, when I was grown, I’d play with them 
all day, 

And if Nurse dared to tell me, “ Now, put your 
blocks away! ” 

I’d build a prison of those blocks, and put her close 
inside, 

And I wouldn’t let her out, no matter how she cried! 

But perhaps you haven’t got a Nurse, or perhaps, she 
isn’t bad, 

Or perhaps your blocks are not the same as when I 
was a lad. 


Charles McMorris Purdy 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


i !9 

Pro Ecelesta Dei 

Surge, Tide of Silence, ebb and flow 
Within the sanctuary where no sound 
Can enter from the busy college ground, 

And give the motif that I long to know; 

This have I sought where life moves to and fro, 
Where scholar greets the student with a look, 

And answers to his longing with a book — 

The futile gods of men who come and go: 

But here, Columbia, a better guide 
Than controversies of philosophy, 

I feel the strength in thee that I have sought; 

And I can cast thy learning far and wide, 

For in this moment I have come to see 

A truth that simpler souls need not be taught. 

Cargill Sprietsma 


The Char 

Have you not toils enough, that you must sweep 
And scrub these tiles, these rooms, and dismal halls? 
Have you not pain enough, that barren walls 
Must shut upon you like an ancient keep — 

Not misery enough, that you must creep 
Upon the muck that from each passer falls — 

Not answering to any bond that calls 

Where husband holds you close and children weep? 


120 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


What wisdom have I got that holds me mute 
When I behold the grace of womanhood, 

And love, and hope, and virtue in dismay? 
How much this learning seems a vain pursuit 
When, impotent where once I understood, 

I pass unmoved, this Beauty in decay. 

Cargill Sprietsma 

The Library 

How often in the hours that lie between 
The coming and the going of the gnome 
That sits upon the apex of the dome, 

Stilly guarding phantasies unseen — 

I feel the spirits passing, that have been 
Ere Hera sped the wandering warriors home, 
Or Corinth yielded up her pride to Rome, 
Companions whom no death can supervene: 

And then I sense the vagueness of this dream, 
In passing through the corridors of night, 
Whilst all the campus lies in heavy sleep; 

For men asleep, and passing spirits seem 
Alike to them that have an inward sight, 
And ages seem but ripples on the Deep. 

Cargill Sprietsma 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


I 2 I 


Cecilia 

I felt a breath upon my lips, 

My hand was in a hand 
That led me where still waters flow, 

Where grasses sleep and light gales blow — 
A silent summer land. 

The rustling of a pale cymar 
Came gently to my ears, 

And pebbled bottom ran between 
Three sloping lawns of gold and green — 

Ran bright as Mary’s tears. 

I heard a voice at my right hand 
That I had heard before 
When as a child I waded deep 
To wake the lilies from their sleep 
And mine their floating ore. 

That voice I knew, I knew the breath, 

I knew whose was the hand 
That led me through the furrowed years 
Of doubt and desolating fears, 

Into this mystic land 

Where sedges sleep and sweet gales blow 
Over a perfumed sod; — 

Your voice, your breath, your hand, your lips, 
These led me to the hand that slips 
Into the realms of God. 

Henry Morton Robinson 


122 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Mine Be Some Figured Flame 

My feet are on the mill of Time, 

They beat with steady tread 
Where those who came before me trod, 
Where those who follow, freshly shod, 
Will beat when I am dead. 

My fingers ply the shifting loom, 

The cloth comes as it can, 

With warp of sin and woof of sun, 

So must I spin till life is run — 

It is the lot of man. 

But still my heart is wet with song, 

My spirit slips its bar, 

My feet press on, the wheel goes round, 

I feel no pain, I hear no sound — 

My eyes are on a star. 

Henry Morton Robinson 

In the Train 

Fellow, I liked you, sharing my seat; 

Ride was long, and my paper read, — 

We fell a-talking, as people will meet, 

Lord knows what we said: 

Trivial things, the girls we’d known. — 

But there was something each of us found: 
And when I left you I seemed to own 
That pleasant feeling of friends around. 

C. H. Ford 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


123 


Footlights 

Pierrot is dead, and Columbine 

Weeps o’er his grave with many an actor’s tear; 

The play is done, the curtain drops before, 

And, in seclusion, Pierrot rises from his bier. 

The play is done! Yet we who view 
The action from a haughty seat, 

Care not if Pierrot’s love be false, 

Or if true heart beneath his tunic beat. 

We cannot care! Our worlds are far apart — 
Each has his own affairs. We cannot fain 

To die as oft as Pierrot dies — 

When once we die we cannot live again. 

Otto v. St. Whitelock 


Water-Colors 

Drift me, purple waters, 

To your sea-blush, 

Mellowing sunward 
From your snow-sand shores; 
Let me dwell 
In the rose-heart shell 
That caverns the sea! 


124 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


Barque of driftwood, 

Set my soul for sails; 

Carry me over wind-still waters 
To the shrine of Twilight, 

Where She tells 
With colored shells, 

Days by sunsets! 

Joseph Brutschy 


Days 

The pageant days pass down life’s ways 
In yellow robes of laughter, 

With velvet coats and jewelled throats 
And red plumes trailing after. 

Some days pass, too, in veils of blue, 

Or cassocks earthen brown, 

And days there are decked out for war, 
A few with heads hung down. 

This little day will glide away 
With others passed before, 

But it will wear upon its hair 
Red poppies evermore. 


Helene Searcy 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


125 


The Sorrowful Dreaming of Autumn 

This is the season for the falling of the leaves. 

Listen to the music that their rustling weaves. 

The corn is long gathered now, all gathered into 
sheaves, 

And a dreaming is come over me, falling with the 
leaves. 

The orchard trees in loneliness, are waiting for the 
Spring, 

Shedding all their golden leaves slowly down a ring. 

Long ago the birds were gone, the branches ceased to 
swing. 

Now the trees in silence, all, are dreaming of the 
Spring. 

O Beauty of the Autumn, that sets my heart to 
crying, 

Keep me from remembering your beauty once was 
flying. 

Cover up my longing for the fires that are dying, 

O Falling leaves of Autumn, that set the heart to 
crying. 

Surely, when all our wisdom moves the lips to 
laughter, 

And beauty stirs the heart, though in dreams, long 
after, 


126 COLUMBIA VERSE 

And hope hangs strong in the soul, like the lamp 
from the rafter, 

Surely there is a blessing in our dreaming and our 
laughter. 

Though my dreams were brave in the summer, as 
my eyes are clear 

And my feet knew nothing of stumbling, or my 
heart of fear, 

Yet here in the end my singing weeps for the year, 

And my heart is full of the darkness, though my 
eyes are clear. 

This is the season’s sorrow: Where go the falling 
leaves, 

Who knows the dream of the sparrow, asleep in the 
window eaves? 

Who steals the Spring’s wild laughter, that the 
heart grieves, 

For the falling leaves, for the falling leaves? 

Jo Felshin 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


127 


Epithalamion 

I would be the darkness, curling within your chamber; 
Then would cool lips be vain, and all resistance 
die; 

You cannot lock out night, though you draw your 
curtains round you; 

Dusk has a quiet, curled desire no one may deny. 

Dusk steals in from nowhere and is passionate for 
hours; 

Lightly it kisses your feet, softly it swathes your 
head, 

Dusk has a thousand fingers and you know not that 
it knows you; 

I would be the darkness, strewn about your bed. 

All night it slowly washes in the parting of your 
breasts, 

All night it sleeps unnoticed in the sweetness of 
your hair, 

Tender, subtly strong, its embrace is made entire, 
And many a strange caress it gives no man would 
ever dare. 

Against your inert whiteness, my dark and wreathing 
body 

Would cover and engulf you like a dimly moving 
sea; 


128 COLUMBIA VERSE 

I would be the darkness round about your chamber, 
And claim you, and know you, and marry you 
thus to me. 

Clifton P. Fadiman 


Rejected Gifts 

I who treasure comfort bring you as a gift 
Soft silks, sweet food gathered by my thrift — 
Bring it on my weary back, in my fingers gaunt — 
But you never hungered nor knew a single want. 

“ Bring me gentle love, song and laughter bring.” 

Oh I am pale from labor, I am tired to sing, 

And love in me is hunger fierce from bitter toil, 
Love in me gropes slowly like roots in shallow soil. 
I can never lie with you in heavy curtained ease — 
I have my rocky slopes to plow, and I must plant 
my trees. 

I can never hold my arms for you to creep within — 
You would mock to see my ribs, plain beneath the 
skin. 

I shall bring you no more gifts — I shall curse the 
greed 

That can make such littleness of gigantic need. 


William Morris Stahl 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


129 


Consultation 

Three doctors stand about my bed — 

Life, and Love, and Death: 

Life would treat to clear my head; 

Love suggests my heart be bled; 

The black one holds all through the night 
A mirror to my breath. 

I cry that I am well, all three 

Look down on me and frown: 

Life says I’m blind and cannot see; 

Love thinks to plunge hot darts in me; 

Death says ice bound from head to toe 
Would keep my fever down! 

William Morris Stahl 


Sonnet 

Into high places, bound by green-black graves, 

I wandered with my scourge upon my back 
Until no murmur reached me but the waves 
That washed away my faint and frightened track. 
Then, where no man might mark the thing I did, 

I beat your pallid beauty from my heart, 

And drained the wine of life that I had hid, 

And burned the passion I had set apart. 


130 


COLUMBIA VERSE 


And then I took the body I had scourged 
And fed it water, and white, unmilled grain, 

And when my flesh was stripped and lean and purged, 
I stood upon the sand. Now clean with pain, 

I sought unblemished beauty and pure light 
Within the sky — but there were clouds that night. 

Lawrence Dormer Jordan 


INDEX 


Adler, M. J., 95, 96 
Alsberg, H. G., 29 
Anderson, W. R., Jr., 94 
Arthur, C. A., Jr., 115 
Anon., 44 

B., 46 

B. , P. M., 39, 40, 41 
Bangs, J. K., 1 
Barns, B., 44 

Barr, S., 65 

Bradley, W. A., 13, 14, 15, 

16 

Bowles, J. P., 87 
Brutschy, J., 123 
Burne, D., 95 

“ C,” 50 

C. , M., 30 
C., McA., 60 
Cane, M. H., 10 
Carpenter, R., 50, 51, 52, 

53 

Clapp, W. N., 5 

Cole, R. J., 17, 18, 23, 24 

Coleman, McA., 59 

131 


Cooley, J. L., 91 
Corey, A. F., 37 
Cronyn, G. W., 58 

D., C., hi 
D avidson, G., 75 
De Bois, M., 71 
DeMille, J., 98 
Deutsch, B., 77, 78, 79 
du Caire, E., 93 

Edman, I., 88 
Erskine, J., 10, 12 
Erskine, R., 72 

F. , C., 74 

Fadiman, C. P., 127 
Felshin, J., 125 
Ford, C. H., 122 
Fox, R., 100 

G. , J. B., 28 
Geer, C., 89 
Gillespy, J. B., 25, 26, : 
Gray, H. D., 36 
Gruening, C., 38 


INDEX 


132 

Haberman, J. V., 30, 31 
Hanemann, W. H., 92 
Hart, S., 109 
Heimann, W. J., 34 
Heilman, G. S., 7, 8, 9 
Henle, J. H., 68 
Hillman, W., 76, 77 
Horan, G. S., 92 

Isaacs, I. E., 46 

Jennings, M. A., 73 
Jordan, L. D., 130 
130 

Kellock, H., 24 
Kelly, R., 35 
Kilmer, J., 57 
Kimball, F. T., 85 

Ledoux, L. V., 47 
Lockwood, C., 29 

Markham, V., 101 
Marx, O., 81, 82 
Minnesinger, The, 9 
Myers, E., 69 

O’Sheel, S., 61 

Pfeiffer, E. H., 63, 64 


Podgorshek, D., 117 
Proskauer, J., 4 
Purdy, C. McM., 117 

Rathborne, I. E., 71 
Rees, F. DuB., 70 
Robinson, H. M., 121, 122 

Searcy, H., 124 
Sentner, D. P., 112, 113 
Sezz, O’Grady, 100 
Shainwald, M. S., 41 
Soskin, L., 80 
Spingarn, J. E., 2, 3 
Sprietsma, C., 119, 120 
Stahl, W. M., 128, 129 
Stone, M. H., 49 
Straiton, C., 87 

Tufts, W., 114 

W., C. S., 56 
Wagner, C. A., 102, 103 
Walden, D. T., 116 
Whitelock, O. v. St., 123 
Wurtzbaugh, J., 83 

Zukofsky, L., 106, 107, 

108 
















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